


The Three-Body Problem

by Raptor_Squad



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jungle, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bottom Sam Wilson, Bottom Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Feels, Comeplay, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talking Bucky Barnes, Dom Bucky Barnes, Drinking, Explicit Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Farm Owner Sam Wilson, Farmhand Bucky Barnes, Farmhand Steve Rogers, Female Ejaculation, Female Sam Wilson, Fluff, Its all very fluffy and sweet, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Photographer Steve Rogers, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Recreational Drug Use, Rimming, Safe Sane and Consensual, Sam Wilson Feels, Steve Rogers Feels, Sub Sam Wilson, Sub Steve Rogers, Tattoo Artist Sam Wilson, Threesome - F/M/M, Top Bucky Barnes, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, War Veteran Bucky Barnes, Writer Bucky Barnes, discussion of sexual health, mature themes, only a dash of angst, they smoke a lot of weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2020-12-21 12:58:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21075278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raptor_Squad/pseuds/Raptor_Squad
Summary: Bucky is seeking peace: bees among flowers and leaves on the wind.Steve is seeking simplicity: knots undone and wordless contentment.Sam is seeking ecstasy: joyful days and orgiastic nights.*"Because to watch them kiss is to witness the birth of a star, and for a singular atomic moment Bucky feels like extraneous cosmic particles caught in and then subsequently cast from the riptide of creation. And then Bucky remembers that love is a force of nature, that its gravity will always pull him back into the rotation, that the three-body problem is only a problem if you're uncomfortable with unpredictability."*





	1. Part I: Proxima Centauri

**Author's Note:**

> This is very self-indulgent fluff and kind of a character study done in three parts. Some things to note:
> 
> Sam is a biracial woman (of Central African and European descent) who grew up in Brooklyn, but now lives in The Wakandan Congo. 
> 
> Most African countries (Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, The Congo, Nigeria, and others) have come together to form an African Union that operates largely like the European Union (pre-Brexit). The Union is based largely in Wakanda, with the palace city as seen in Black Panther being referred to as T'Chakalo. 
> 
> These things aren't like pivotal plot points or anything, but it is a part of the larger world they live in.

Sam, the lovely, if a little jaded, biracial woman who -amongst other things- owns and runs a small farm in the Wakandan Congo posts a series of videos, photos, and caption cards to her Instagram story on Friday, April 12th, 2020. The first is a ten second clip of her singing along to an Amy Winehouse song as she is driven through a jungle in a car. The second is a caption card that reads, _A love of my life just left to go pursue greener pastures and I couldn’t be happier or more proud, but now I’m down a helping pair of hands and that is kinda sad. Anyway, drinks? _ the next photo is simply a table with bottles and glasses of drinks, at least seven of them, with hands and motion-blurred faces in the background. _Cards Against Humanity_ is scattered amongst the group. The next video is of Sam as she twirls her way down a boardwalk, white skirt fanning out around her, club lights fading behind her, singing _la vie en rose_ in a low, sultry voice, only slightly off key. The next video is her sitting on the beach, parallel to the ocean, her friends playing in the crashing surf under the light of a moon. Sam’s face is lit up by fire as she speaks, _you know, sometimes I wake up and the world feels really lonely, and my heart feels cold like it’s been left outside during a storm, forgotten. Sometimes the people you love most have to walk away so they can love themselves better, and it’s important to be happy for them, it’s important to let them go. But it’s okay to be sad, as long as you can tell someone you’re sad, and if that person can help you be less sad then you should let them_. The video cuts off, but continues into the next one almost seamlessly. _I lost someone recently, except they aren’t lost, they left, another tally scratched into the asylum walls of my mind, and I’m learning that that’s okay, because someone or something new will come along and fill that space where only an external force can reside. In the meantime, I have such wonderful friends, who took me dancing and drinking and celebrated the closing of that door by reminding me to throw open the windows and let the breeze burst through and cleanse the spaces with refreshing air. Love the people who love you back. Good morning._ Sam smiles, beautiful and sad at the camera, and then her attention is inevitably drawn over it towards someone calling or gesturing in the distance and her smile turns brighter and fuller right as the video, and her story, ends.

It goes almost entirely unnoticed by the internet community as a whole, lost under socio-political bullshit, but Bucky sees it one night as he’s scrolling through the explore page, looking for beautiful meaning in a world of ones and zeros.

He clicks on her profile, intrigued by the old-world sorrow in her eyes and the childlike joy of her smile. He finds pictures of book pages, flummoxed to find that the books are ones she’s written, and that the poetry shocks tears to his eyes. He finds pictures of tattoos, surprised to find that very few are on her own body and that she is the artist behind them. He finds pictures of a beautiful jungle stretched under a sherbet sky, the vague forms of muscular men tending the fields in the background, a large tray of ice cold drinks beckoning them near.

Bucky finds quiet beauty in the ones and zeros, and decides to click _message. _

Bucky talks back and forth with Sam for two months, trying to understand and find understanding, and for no reason whatsoever, Sam listens and responds. Sam has over 40,000 followers on Instagram, 20,000 thousand followers on Twitter, and 60,000 subscribers on YouTube. But she listens to Bucky. He asks her if she still needs a new farmhand. She says yes, but tells him that everyone who’s asked that before has thus far been denied. He asks what he has to say to be accepted. Sam doesn’t message back for two days, and Bucky quietly starts setting his affairs in order because even if she says no, he might want to escape anyway.

Sam says yes.

When Bucky asks why, she says, _because I spent the last two days learning everything about you. Don’t forget to hug your sister. I’ll email you details._ and then she signs off. Bucky spares a moment to think that he might’ve bitten off more than he can chew but something, the universe maybe, tells him to take the leap anyway.

Bucky checks his email the following morning to find three pages of information.

_ Dear James Barnes, _

_I’m excited for you to come on board. Think of this as a Peace Corps kind of thing, except without the shitty pay or the shitty treatment of locals. Attached you will find a simple contract to be signed and returned before we can move forward, and some possible flight dates to choose from. My parents built this home and farm so that their descendants wouldn’t have to work for a living, and could instead pursue their own dreams. I am living proof of their success. The simple fact is that I cannot physically do everything myself and I’ve always preferred to be surrounded by friends than my extended family, to a degree, which is why I extended invitations to live here to my closest friends, Steve, Iman, and Gabe. Steve lives here with me, Iman fell in love and moved down the street to start his family. Gabe recently left us to pursue his own dreams in Europe (there was a girl involved, you understand) and so I’ve found myself bereft. You’ll be an outlier, a beta-test, if you will, to see whether or not I should actually fulfill my pipe dream of building a permanent guest house for people to occupy. Everyone should have a place to escape to, and I’d like to be part of that solution. Regardless, you seem like a good fit, and Steve and Iman are both excited to meet you (we did not violate any of your constitutional rights in obtaining information about you, we leave that squarely at your federal governments feet). Iman is an old family friend who helps me take care of the house and acts as my official assistant and legal counsel when it comes to business matters. He’ll be sending you an email shortly with more details. (Our lives are nothing but small details, you’ll get used to it). Steve is my right hand man, he knows the grounds almost as well as I do, and has been here for five years now. You’ll be working mostly with him when you get here so he can show you the ropes. I promise it’s not constant back-breaking work, but there’s a fair amount of it. Consider very seriously what you will be giving up to be here, with us. Consider very seriously the possibility of what you will gain. _

_Talk soon XOXO _

_Samadhi Kari Omari-Wilson _

The next page is a list of upcoming flight dates and their itineraries, including the layovers. The last page is a PDF document, a contract, the details of which state that should he sign, he will live with them for 2 years and receive a monthly income of $200, he is permitted to find extra means of income as long as he does not neglect his duties to the farm. He is permitted one month of vacation per year, that will roll over to the following year if he doesn’t use it. He can bring a maximum of two suitcases, room and board will be provided at no expense to him, and transportation is provided and shared amongst the household. He can leave anytime he wants, but will have to pay a fine of one (1) months income to terminate his contract. If he misses his flight and does not contact either the airline or Sam herself within 24hrs he is responsible for compensating the fees paid to cancel it. If he chooses to cancel his flight and gives proper notice to both the airline and Sam he will not be responsible for any fees.

It is the nicest contract he’s ever read.

He signs and emails it back within the hour.

Sam texts him seven smiley faces followed by two monkeys with their hands over their eyes and four suns. Bucky doesn’t know exactly what it means, but it makes him feel warm and happy inside so he responds with a string of hearts and smiley faces and starts packing his life up. 

***

Sam picks him up at the airport, standing still in the sea of writhing bodies. She waves him over to a visa kiosk where she appears to be charming an MP with a singular bill and her smile and they hardly look at him before they’re stamping him through with a visa that won’t expire for two years. They grab Bucky’s suitcase and make their way outside where he can hear the cacophony of the city swirling around them. Sam ushers him into a Honda Element, painted bright orange, with stickers on the dash and a garland of flowers hanging from the rearview mirror.

“Don’t worry too much about learning to speak Xhosa or French, I just want you to focus on listening. We’re gonna be here in the capital for a couple more days to run errands and acclimate you a little before we just toss you in the jungle,” Sam smiles at him, the gap between her teeth and the golden incisors in the corners of her mouth charming him immediately.

“Sounds great,” Bucky responds, distracted by the scent of jasmine and incense in the air, the way the people look, the sounds coming from their mouths, the pulse of traffic beyond the gates of the airport. Sam introduces their driver as ‘Zuko’ with a conspiratorial wink and a kiss to the mans cheek. He has scars running up the right side of his neck from beneath his collar and a face made of worn leather. They converse quickly in French before she turns back to him,

“Zuko isn't his real name, duh, but he’s been driving me around since I was thirteen and it’s stuck. He’s secretly charmed by it,” she laughs, golden in the humid heat pulsing against the windows of the car. Bucky’s nose remains pressed against the windows as they duck and weave through the city. Sam keeps up a running commentary over the quiet music playing through the speakers, not pressuring him to talk, but inviting the possibility all the same. Their hotel is right next to a palace made of shimmering gold and towering stone.

“I thought the King lived in T’Chakalo,” Bucky whispers breathlessly.

“He does, this is actually a temple for Oshun, one of the Orisha’s. See those women?” Sam gestures to a pulsing -dancing, now that Bucky is looking closer- group of women near the steps. He nods.

“They’re, huh, well priestesses is the closest word I can find in English. A similar, but altogether inadequate word. They’re daughters of Oshun,” Sam shrugs.

Zuko pulls into an alleyway and then makes a quick turn into the rear parking lot of a guest house that looks understated in comparison. Bucky thinks that that might be the point. Sam leads them right past the front desk and into a tiny elevator, assuring him that Zuko will bring his suitcase up after them, and then down a short hallway that consists of only four doors along one side.

“My room is right next door, Zuko is on your other side. Wifi password should be in your nightstand. Do you want to stay here or come out to dinner with us?” Sam opens his curtains so the room is bathed in warm late afternoon light, and her question hangs unassuming in the air between them for several heartbeats while Bucky slips off his shoes and collapses onto the loveseat at the foot of the bed.

“Can I get an hour?” Bucky relaxes, full-bodied, into the plush cushions. Sam has lovely tastes, because while understated on the outside, this guest house is lush with comfortable and clean amenities. She nods, a faint smile on her face and then touches his shoulder on her way out.

Bucky takes a few moments to breathe in the sweet air that seems to permeate the state and tries not to think about how lovely it would be to die in such a beautiful place. 

***

Sam drags him and Zuko to a restaurant that’s tucked away in a side street but has a perfect view of the row of tourist trap cafe’s on the main road. She orders curries and a plate of french bread for the table, as well as a bottle of whiskey for them to share. Their conversation is never stilted and every time Bucky has a stupid question she answers him with a patient smile, kind in the face of his culture shock, generous to his ignorance. As the night drags on Bucky worries about the errands she said she had to run; he doesn’t want to be the reason she got distracted and forgot something, but Sam assuages his fears when, around 10, the restaurant starts to close and the bar starts to fill, and she herds them both outside. Giggling, she whistles for a tuk-tuk and claims the seat behind the driver so that she is facing Zuko and Bucky.

Sam sits and moves like water, Bucky notes, like she could fit into a slum or a state dinner easily.

They drive deeper into the city. Lights and sounds buzz by Bucky’s ears and the cool air helps sober him up, but his limbs stay loose and his mind stays quiet. When they stop Bucky turns his head to look at where Sam is already standing, patient as ever, and behind her he finds chaos. There’s an archway lit up like a New York Christmas, the words Midnight Market blazing in bright flashing LED lights, drawing him out of the tuk-tuk before he’s entirely aware he’s moved. Beyond the entrance all Bucky can see are throngs of people and endless stalls and carts, vendors shouting in various languages, tourists and locals alike taking in the wares. Sam wobbles and then grips onto his bicep and Bucky adjusts so that she can hold onto him comfortably. He’s pretty sure she’s guiding him more than he’s balancing her, but he appreciates the touch so much that he keeps his mouth shut and lets her pull him into the madness. Bucky’s job, it seems, is to act as her escort slash bodyguard. His towering presence at her side dissuades anyone from getting too close and jostling her, and the leering looks he notices thrown her sweetly oblivious way are cowed by the force of his glare. Bucky knows he’s a big guy, he towers over most other people and he worked out a lot when he was stateside, so he outright dwarfs Sam, who is maybe 5’ 3” on a good day, but he suspects she planned it that way. Every stall she pulls him to, he stays close, offers his opinion when asked, and carries some of the small packages they’re taking with them. Zuko trails along, paying the vendors and discussing pickups and drop-offs for everything they can’t carry. Sam stops at an intersection, vaguely eyeballing a few kitschy stalls with sparkling eyes.

“Bucky?”

“Ma’am?” he responds automatically, eyes sweeping their surroundings for potential threats, and then he catches himself. Reminds his body that he is starting a new life, away from the blood and toil of warfare, away from bureaucrats and their endless agendas. If he is acting as Sam’s bodyguard, it’s because he wants to protect her, because she has been nothing but kind to him and deserves to have someone watching her back.

“Would you like a smoothie?” her eyes are guileless and open, the constant array of lights making them glow and sparkle in the night.

“Sure,” he smiles at her, enchanted, and offers his arm to her again. She giggles, seemingly charmed, and leads him towards the fruit cart a few feet away. Zuko is on the phone with someone and waves them off when she offers a smoothie for him too. Sam orders a coconut smoothie with lychee, and somehow (read: weaponizes her feminine wiles shamelessly) convinces Bucky to get boba added to his strawberry banana. It’s delicious and he tells her as much, letting her lead him back into the fray.

***

When he wakes up the next morning, the sun is just barely crossing the horizon, warm purples and pinks lightening the periwinkle sky. Bucky takes an hour to clean himself up and respond to emails from his family and friends alike, reassuring them that he knows what he’s doing, and that it already feels like one of the best decisions of his life. There’s an electric kettle and a basket of teas and instant coffees on the console near the door, and a couple of dark green mugs flipped onto a small serving tray. At around 5am just as his water boils there is a soft knock on his door. Sam is standing on the other side, dressed for the day in bright yellow leggings and a purple tunic covered in sunflowers that falls to her mid-thigh. The only makeup she has on is winged eyeliner that reminds Bucky, ostensibly, of Audrey Hepburn.

“Good morning, I heard you puttering about, thought we could get an early start?” she doesn’t invite herself in, just stands on the other side of his threshold like a beacon. Bucky nods and waves her in anyway, offering tea or coffee. She shoos him over to the loveseat under the window and proceeds to make them both a cup of coffee and then joins him.

“How are you feeling? Sleep well?” she asks after a comfortable silence.

“Good, yeah, I slept like a baby,” Bucky answers honestly. Her responding smile is radiant.

“I’m glad. We only have to do a couple errands today, and then I’m taking you shopping,” she tells him with the air of someone who probably knows better than he, so after he makes the appropriate noises of you don’t have to do that, you’re already doing so much for me, he agrees and they drink the rest of their coffee in companionable silence.

Bucky has always been more comfortable in shared silences, the pressure to make conversation an anxious needle poking at the back of his neck, and he’s glad that Sam seems to feel the same way.

Their trek through the markets is filled with more of her running commentary, answering questions Bucky doesn’t know to ask yet, easing him into the controlled chaos of every day life in the city. “It’s much quieter down at the farm. Our neighbors only come by during certain harvest months for their own crops. The village is only half an hour away, though, if you find yourself missing people,” Sam tells him right as they enter what she calls The French Market.

“Whenever I come to the city I get my relatives and friends to give me shopping lists for whatever they want or need so they don’t have to constantly rely on the usually jacked up local market prices for specialty items,” she explains when they pick up a large but discreet bag from a pharmacy. Around lunchtime she shoos Zuko off to take care of pickups and deliveries, and his own errands, while she wraps her arm around Bucky’s and leads them through a web of side streets.

They stop at a cafe called Happy’s and indulge in cannabis-infused pastries with coffee. Bucky’s feeling calm and a little loose, happy, he realizes, and grins like a fool when he catches Sam’s eye on their way out of the cafe. They drop off a few smaller bags at the guest house and then they’re back on the street, Sam hailing a couple of motorcycle taxis instead of the requisite tuk-tuk. When Bucky raises an eyebrow in question at the boy waiting for him to hop on Sam just smiles brilliantly and makes her own driver blush with the languorous way she climbs aboard. After just a few minutes, Bucky fully understands why she wanted the motorcycles; they duck and weave and move much faster through the city, making it to another coliseum-like building with signs brandishing it Central Market in only a few minutes. They’re at the south entrance, or so the subtitle on the sign says, and the walkway leading deeper into the labyrinth is cluttered with vendors and people.

“How come the tourists look so dirty?” trips out of Bucky’s mouth when Sam slips her arm in his, the movement becoming natural to both of them quickly. Bucky thinks about dancehalls and diner dates. Sam rewards his slip with fond laughter.

“White people like to visit developing countries and ‘slum it’,” she raises a hand covered in rings and singing bangles to make the air quotes, “as if western nations are the only ones capable of showering.” She rolls her eyes and Bucky can see the opinions and biting words banging down the doors in the back of her mouth.

So he waits.

“Two, okay three, types of white tourists: the eco-tourist,” she waves her arms in a grand mocking gesture, “they go to developing or third world countries, build a school, help out a clinic, take lots and lots of pictures with smiling brown children, and then they go back home, resumé summarily padded, having left no impact on the area they visited, or leaving it worse off.” Sam gets a faraway look in her eyes, a memory, maybe, but Bucky stays quiet and lets Sam steer him through the various alleyways without paying much attention to the riot of colors around them.

“The second kind is people just looking for a vacation, often younger kids on their gap year or older people trying to make the most of their retirement. They’re pretty dusty because they’re largely nomadic, moving from town to town and making deals with locals to teach English or help build something for a couple months in exchange for room and board. They’re somehow usually under the impression that if they wear their hair in shitty dreads and don’t clean themselves regularly, they’ll fit in with the locals more, but aside from the blatant cultural appropriation they’re fairly harmless,” Sam shrugs and turns them sharply down another alley.

“The third kind, and pay attention, the third kind aren’t always white people, though most are. Every place has an underbelly, and right now that underbelly is the Triad’s. With Chinese economic expansion and Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road thing, a lot of Chinese people have been moving to places where their projects are developing, the business-tourist, and with them have come gangsters, smugglers, and traffickers, as well as raised land prices and the destruction of cultural heritage. There are a lot less white business tourists because of that,” Sam lowers her voice to a soothing murmur despite the veracity of her words and pulls him to a stop at a fabric stall. She exchanges several phrases with the vendor, hands running over various fabrics as she assesses them critically.

“Pick any fabrics you like, we’ll get them tailored into clothes for you. The scraps will be used for floor mats,” Sam picks a couple of fabrics, bright and happy, and holds them while she waits for Bucky to decide. He considers the general climate of the Congo. Peeks at the fabrics in Sam’s hands and the thin tunic she wears over her leggings. In the end, Bucky picks three fabrics, all light, almost transparent cotton; a bright teal covered in tiny stars like polka dots, a wine red with a recurring shell pattern, and a simple off-white covered in yellow flowers and green leaves. Sam nods at him approvingly and pays for their bundles of fabric, slipping her hand back into the crook of Bucky’s elbow as the vendor wraps their purchases. Bucky takes the bag with a nod of thanks and then they’re off again.

“Sam?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Please don’t ever let me become a dusty white tourist.” Sam’s laugh rings through the cavernous space and follows them back out into the bright daylight and Bucky feels that he’s done something very right. 

***

Sam knocks on Bucky’s door at exactly 6:00am the next day with a cup of iced coffee from a cafe nearby and a wrapped package.

“An apology for waking you so early,” she whispers at Bucky’s bedhead, ever present grin teasing at the edges of her lips. Bucky takes the coffee gratefully and waves her over to the loveseat. Sam sits patiently, sipping her own coffee, while Bucky carefully unwraps the package. It’s a large notebook, bound with an elastic band, with a playful little red string peeking from the bottom and a matching red star on the spine. There are a few pens taped to it’s hard cover, and when Bucky flips it open every page is a grid, and there’s a pocket in the back. He looks to Sam questioningly, wondering if she knows.

“Whether you decide to stay like Steve, or leave like Gabriel, I thought you might like to document your time, fill it with musings of the clouds, decipher the phonetics of language, even. I’ve found it quite soothing to simply write for the sake of writing,” she smiles at him again. Bucky doesn’t think anyone has ever smiled at him this much in such a short amount of time. If he looks closely he can see the beginnings of crows feet around her eyes and the single dimple in her left cheek.

“Thank you,” he whispers back, charmed. She nods and then turns to look out his window, admiring the few stars still stubborn enough to dot the sky.

“We’ll be heading out in an hour. Wear something comfy, we’ll be on the road for about four hours, not including pickups and drop-offs. Traffic should lessen the further from the city center we get,” Sam pats his thigh as she gets up, taking the smell of jasmine flowers and incense with her as she disappears back through his door. Bucky takes the hour to shower, drink another cup of coffee, and generally become more human. He puts the leather notebook in his backpack with his laptop, headphones, and other small personal effects. He grabs his suitcase and double checks the room to make sure he’s not forgetting anything and then he makes his way down to the lobby. Sam and Zuko are waiting for him near the front so Bucky passes his room key to the young man at the check-in desk with a nod of thanks. “Zuko will load your suitcase and then we’ll be off, first stop is the bakery,” Sam is holding another cup of iced coffee, a bright and colorful bag strapped across her own body. She’s in a tank top and more bright leggings, her hair a cascading bun of curls on her head, sunglasses perched on her face, entirely comfortable.

“Bakery?” Bucky says without an ounce of shame at the hope in his voice. He is rewarded with a playful and sultry look over the top of her sunglasses, brown eyes flashing like diamonds.

“I like sweet things for breakfast,” she says with the kind of slow once-over of Bucky’s body that makes him feel hyperaware of his cutoffs and tank top and he blushes to the roots of his soul. He sees her eyes linger on his sides where the holes for his arms have been extended almost down to his hips, his lats and the sides of his pecs highly visible. “I played myself,” he mutters as follows her out the door and acts like she isn’t silently laughing at him when he opens the passenger door for her.

(Sam is one-hundred percent out-loud laughing at him when they pull up to a bakery the size of a department store filled wall to wall with treats and he makes a squawking noise).

(She buys him a box of assorted goodies anyway).

***

The drive down to Sam’s estate (farm, she says with a pout, estate makes me sound elitist) takes a little over six hours total, including various pickups and dropoffs. When they pull up outside bright gates painted like a Monet sunset, it’s edging closer to two p.m than it is to one. Bucky had dozed for a while around hour three between a bag of fabrics and a box of fruits. Sam and Zuko’s conversation had washed over him like mist, carrying him out to sea where he could daydream through provinces.

“C’mon, Bucky, i’ll show you around the house and then introduce you to Steve! Iman will be over later,” Sam waits for him patiently by the porch, but Bucky is too busy gawking at her home for him to notice the amused grin in in her tone.

It’s totally an estate.

Brick walls covered in various ivy’s and flowers branch off from the gate and make sharp 90 degree turns about 100 meters away on either side. He can’t see where they stop, the east wall disappears behind the house, and the west wall seems to melt back into the surrounding jungle. There is a comfortably low seating area directly to Bucky’s right, tucked under a couple trees and backing against a planter box, a natural stone table and bench wraparound. Marigolds to tickle the back of your neck as you sit and enjoy the breeze. There’s two buildings, as far as Bucky can currently see. The first is clearly the main house, only two story’s tall, but wide and painted an ocean blue with burnt orange roof tiles, and large, almost industrial, windows. The entire upper floor looks like a room of windows. The porch is but two wide steps up on the foundation and Bucky is struck first by the relief sculpture poking from the wall, and then second by the wide open folding door adjacent to it. The second, adjacent building is almost as breathtaking as the house. The lower level is clearly meant to be a garage of some sort, but there’s no visible door on the front side. There is, however, a large cement overhang sheltering two off-road buggies, two motorcycles, and a shiny silver Jeep. The garage is painted in pretty murals of local flora and Bucky falls a little bit in love. The upper level mirrors the house with it’s large windows, but it has a flat roof and Bucky can just barely see the top of a chair poking over the low half-wall. He feels, just a little bit, like he walked backwards through a portal into a hippie commune when he looks back to Sam and finds her already with a joint between two elegant fingers and smoke curling around her mouth as she leans against one of the half walls on the porch.

“See something you like?” she asks in a husky tone that makes Bucky’s heart flutter.

“I see everything I like,” Bucky replies automatically, years and years of living in Brooklyn and flirting playfully with everything that moved coming back to him like a remembered dream. He’s a little shocked by his own mouth but calls it a win when Sam laughs musically.

“Come on, you can ogle later, let me show you your room,” she waits for him to slip his shoes off next to hers before she picks them up herself and carries them through the house. Bucky protests the whole way, but Sam hushes him and waves absently at the rooms they pass through.

“Living room, kitchen, dining room, that door’s the bathroom, so’s that one, office, and these three doors are the bedrooms,” Sam passes the first one, turns the corner, passes the second one, and comes to a stop at the very last room in the short hallway.

“This ones yours, boo. Steve’s the first door, you can thank him for the deep clean, middle room is for any of my family that decide to visit unannounced,” Sam smiles pleasantly and then pushes the door open and Bucky, once again, falls a little bit in love.

There’s only one window, facing the front gate, and the room is bright and cool and painted a soothing melon green. There’s a queen-sized bed on a low frame under the window, freshly made with sheets that smell like sunshine and covered with seven pillows of various size and fluffiness. There’s a door near the foot of the bed, presumably the closet, and a wall desk set on the same wall as the door. It’s immaculately clean, and the mosquito net hanging above the bed looks brand new as well.

“Wow,” Bucky says.

“Yeah, the house looks a lot bigger on the outside, but the walls are brick and mortar, four inches thick. When my parents built it, we were the only people up here, and there was no electricity, so the house traps the cool air.” Sam sets his shoes down carefully near the ottoman at the foot of the bed.

“Here’s the keys for your room: we’ll never come in here without your express permission,” she looks him directly in the eyes as she passes him three small keys attached to a glass marble keychain. Bucky sets his backpack down on the ottoman and looks around. The desk is smooth wood with metal accents and a built in shelf that stretches up the wall.

“There’s a transformer box built into one of the shelves,” Sam touches the shelf in question and Bucky leans down to see a black box with three standard plugs and four USB outlets facing out happily, shiny from a fresh clean.

“There’s recessed lighting too, but if you want another lamp just let me know, I’ve got like twelve extras,” she points to one of the little round lights attached to the bottom of some of the shelves.

“The roof tiles are all solar and there’s two batteries on the side of the house. We’ll probably be installing AC sometime in the next year, but for now the fans will do. Wifi password is in the desk drawer,” Sam moves to leave the room but turns around when she’s in the threshold. “Go ahead and unpack, get settled, I’ll go find Steve so he can give you the grand tour, I’ve unfortunately got an appointment in an hour and I have to prep,” she smiles at him apologetically and then she’s gone. Bucky unpacks; tucks his prized possessions into cubbies and folds his clothes into the closet; lines his boots next to the ottoman (which he discovers doubles as a trunk), and counts his blessings when he slides his suitcase into a corner of the closet. He’s just finished cleaning out his backpack when there is a polite knock on the half open door.

Bucky jumps a little, startled, and his drapes ruffle in apology, but then there's a shining blonde head poking around the door with a sheepish smile.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, buddy. I’m Steve, Sammy asked me to come give you the tour,” Steve leans on the doorjamb but doesn’t move to open the door any further or step inside. Huh. Okay. Bucky isn’t used to having his personal space respected so much, but it’s nice.

“Hey, thanks. It’s okay. I’m Bucky,” Bucky holds out his hand for a shake and opens the door fully, waving Steve to come in while Bucky grabs his shoes.

“Ah, you won’t need those, there’s flip flops on the stairs for you already. No shoes allowed in the house,” Steve grins, guileless, and Bucky is torn between conflicting images of this man as Michael or Lucifer.

Steve’s tour of the estate (and it really is an estate, not a small time farm like Sam tried to sell it as) is filled with pointers and personal anecdotes.

_We’re actually pretty centrally in a national nature preserve so you might see some large cats or species of unknown origin down by the river getting a drink. _

_Don’t let the water fool you, the river is twice as deep as I am tall and the current will sweep you away without remorse during the rainy season. _

_Whenever you come back to the pavilion, look up. Sometimes snakes like to slither up here at night for warmth. _

_Assume that most creatures are genetically engineered to kill or poison you. Kinda like Australia, except African and more resentful of your pale skin. _

_Careful here, it’s stupid slippery when wet, I almost broke my arm once. _

_I__f you fall in the pond and make it out without too much incident, double check your whole body in a mirror, the leeches will latch on and you’ll be none the wiser. Trust me_.

Overall, the tour of the grounds is nice. Bucky would be shadowing Steve for the first few weeks to learn the ropes, and the rest he’d learn as the seasons passed. There’s a tall man puttering about in the outdoor kitchen, right behind the backdoor, when they make it back to the house, and the slow sad sounds of saxophone music filtering down through the open windows of the second floor.

“And this is Iman, this place would go under without him,” Steve pats the man on the back and before Bucky can introduce himself he hears Sam hollering from somewhere above, _“I resemble that accusation!”_ Iman and Steve laugh good-naturedly and Bucky holds his hand out for a shake.

“Nice to finally meet you, Bucky. I live down the street, take a right at the gate, I’m the first house on the left on the other side of the bridge. Don’t hesitate to ask for something, unless you require stitches, then I cannot help you,” Iman smiles at him brightly and then returns to furiously grinding something in his mortar.

“Stitches?” Bucky blurts.

“The jungle demands sacrifice,” Iman and Steve chorus happily. The alarmed look on Bucky’s face must give something away because Steve holds out his arm wordlessly. There’s a long, thin scar running down his bicep, almost from shoulder to elbow.

“Fell down rebuilding the pavilion roof, there were sharp rocks. Sam stitched me up,” Steve rolls his eyes like the whole ordeal was a ridiculous exercise in stupidity.

“Why don’t you head up and corral the lady for dinner, she should be finishing up with her client.” Iman waves them away with an imperious cleaver. Steve grins brightly and grabs Bucky’s shoulder, leading him back into the house and up the stairwell. There’s a screen cage at the top, with an open door that steps out into the most amazing loft space Bucky has ever seen.

There’s a wooden walkway across the length of the massive room with a large alcove to one side, with a low bed and an end table, while the other, smaller alcove holds an elegant wooden dresser and vanity, and Bucky can see the small set of stairs that lead up to the bedroom alcove in the back corner. The entire lower level of the loft is a studio space. There’s a room to Bucky’s right, likely a bathroom, but immediately to Bucky’s left, in a symmetrical mirror, there is a tattoo parlor where Sam herself is bent over the calf of a slim African woman with a buzzed head, separated from the rest of the room by a folding screen. The saxophone music has been replaced by a melancholic cornet that all but covers up the buzz of her machine. Across from the tattoo space, taking up a majority of the level, is an artists’ wet dream. A glass drafting table with up-lights, two easels, and an adjacent wooden desk covered in old paint and burn marks, and shelves upon shelves upon cubbies bursting with supplies. The range of colors and objects are a little boggling and Bucky is sure there’s more hiding away in some of the chests and boxes lining the walls. But perpendicular to that is a set of instruments. A violin, shining with polish, lounges on a stand next to an electric keyboard, which sits next to still more drums and other percussive instruments that seem to be displayed under the stairs methodically. Between the instruments and the bathroom, completing the circle, is a lounge space. A low, wide, U-shaped red couch is tucked against the half wall with a glass coffee table in the middle, directly under a ceiling fan hanging from the slanted roof. There’s a couple art books open on the table, and a sketchbook on the couch, but what catches Bucky’s eyes is the massive black and gold hookah pipe resting dead center next to a jar of weed.

“Holy shit,” Bucky breathes softly. He can feel Steve’s body vibrating with laughter next to him but ignores that in favor of moving into the center of the room so he can spin and take it all in, again and again. He notices the hinges on the stairs the second time, moves only a little closer to see that they do in fact fold up into the upper level like a trapdoor, and then moves back to where Steve is perusing the shelves he didn’t even notice lining the walls of the cage. The tattoo machine cuts off and the music is turned down so they can speak without yelling. Sam murmurs to the woman in Xhosa while wrapping her leg, and hands her a small plastic bag of goodies to take home, likely for aftercare. The woman hugs her, nods to both Steve and Bucky, and is on her way within the space of five minutes. Sam stretches out and even Bucky can hear her back popping.

“Jesus, posture, kid,” Steve moves over to her, hand already raised to help massage the crick from her neck and shoulders.

“I know, but that’s a perk of having you around, love,” Sam leans into Steve’s prodding and then her eyes catch on Bucky in the middle of the room.

“Darling! Was Steve nice to you?” Sam prances out of Steve’s grip with a flourish, mindlessly tossing her gloves onto her workbench, and pulls Bucky directly on the couch with her, legs thrown over his lap.

“He was,” Bucky smiles and melts when she cuddles close, the warmth of her personality a balm for his soul.

“Good.” Sam says firmly.

“Why don’t you help me clean up while Steve and Iman finish dinner. We can eat up here,” she addresses the last part to Steve who leaves with a nod. Sam has Bucky wiping down the work bench while she throws all of the bio-waste away and sets her station to rights.

“So what do you think?” she asks barely two minutes later.

“Think of what?” Bucky answers, purposely obtuse. For all that he’s already halfway in love with the place and the person running it, he wants to test it, see if she really is the person he thinks she is.

“Of the farm, of the house, of Steve and Iman and me, obviously,” Sam doesn’t even flinch, her voice remains steady and cool, she just continues organizing her ink bottles and scribbling into an open notebook on the work table.

“It’s an estate with a farm on it,” Bucky continues methodically wiping down every inch of the bench and the stool Sam was half perched on while she worked.

“The house is beautiful; you can see the love and care you all put into it to keep it clean and comfortable. Steve and Iman seem nice, if opposed to the concept of clothes,” Bucky lets the chuckle crawl up his throat and burst into the blush on his cheekbones. Iman had been cooking shirtless, the brave bastard, and Steve was shamelessly walking around in nothing but, really, criminally short shorts. Their muscles clearly came from long days spent under the sun toiling, the contrast of Iman’s dark skin and Steve’s surfer-boy tan had sent his mind spinning down sinful avenues, and Bucky suspected Steve had a pair of dumbbells around somewhere, no one had traps or pecs like that without extensive work.

“And you,” Bucky finishes the bench and steps back to look directly at Sam only to find her watching him intently. There is a weary expectation on her face, like she knows what he’s going to say and is both disappointed and hopeful about it at the same time.

“You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met. I feel like you should be giving TED talks about how to be happy, but I also feel like you’re constantly trying to figure it out yourself, and that’s why you surround yourself with beautiful nouns.” Sam does the most unexpected thing then: she smiles like her heart was just shattered into a million pieces. And then she moves until she’s standing toe to toe with Bucky, raises one hand to cup his stubbly cheek, and presses her lips to the opposite cheekbone softly, but with all of the careful sadness in the world. She pats his cheek gently and then moves to clear the couch and coffee table for dinner. The hookah gets relegated to one of the desks in the art corner, but the jar of weed goes on the lower shelf of the coffee table, next to a ceramic ashtray holding a package of rolling papers.

“You’re not wrong,” she says, and that’s the end of it. Steve calls for Bucky to help bring up the food; plates and bowls of curry and chicken and pork and vegetables and a pot of brown rice. The smells alone have Bucky’s stomach rumbling and he suddenly remembers he hasn’t eaten anything today besides pastries and snacks in the car. They convene on the couch and serve themselves family style, picking at the various foods with almost every spoonful of rice. Bucky sits back and watches the way they interact with each other. Steve and Sam seem to constantly be touching each other, legs pressing together with jokes and elbows thrown with witty barbs, the years of their friendship evident in their easy intimacy. Iman seems more reserved, but Bucky quickly learns that he’s sharp as a knife and can keep pace with Sam’s political rambling with ease. Bucky falls asleep that night with a belly full of good food and excitement.

Oddly enough, Bucky wakes up at 4am, feeling rested and refreshed. It’s still dark when he peeks out his window; stars in the sky and only the faintest traces of indigo crawling above the eastern wall. When Bucky steps into the hallway, Steve’s door is ajar and light is spilling into the hallway. He can hear very quiet music drifting from somewhere else in the house. Bucky doesn’t look into Steve’s room even though the open door feels like an invitation, instead he goes to the bathroom. The music gets clearer the closer Bucky gets to the kitchen but it’s empty save for a sleeping dog near the back door. He can see Sam’s feet propped up on the coffee table in the living room through he archway, and the flickering green light of a bluetooth speaker. Bucky wonders how much of her musical library is sad. Sam doesn’t acknowledge him beyond a tilt of her coffee mug when he joins her minutes later. He found the instant coffee and the electric kettle easily enough, propped as they were on the counter. He sits on the loveseat while she slouches on the couch and scrolls through her phone. Bucky had left his own phone on his desk, still plugged into the transformer. The living room curtains are all still drawn so the room feels dark and cozy, but eventually Sam gets up to draw them all back and open the front doors, lets the cool breeze and the gently lightening sky peek into the house.

The first words spoken that morning are, “did you sleep well?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

And that’s that, until Steve emerges when the sky is turning from lavender to a tapestry of fire, woven through with threads of pink and gold. He sits on the porch, enjoying the joint Sam passes to him wordlessly, and a cup of steaming coffee. Sam perches on the half wall next to him and they pass the weed back and forth in a wordless dance to the beat of familiarity. Bucky moves out there after he tops up his own cup and accepts the silent offering with calm joy. If this is the first day of the rest of his life, then it is a beautiful beginning.

***

“Take a break…” is what rouses Bucky from his post lunch nap.

“I am on my way!” Steve sings back cheerfully from his own hammock strung several feet above Bucky’s. Steve hops down, all six feet of golden muscle and sunshine radiating from his pores. When Bucky peeks over the lip of his cocoon, Sam is being escorted by two of the dogs, Zazu and Tiki, through the fields of corn towards them, bags of coffee in her hands.

Bucky’s been on the estate for a month, now. It’s been a month of learning the rhythms of the farm: where to step, how to clear space for a new crop, where the best spots for napping are, when a fruit is ripe for picking. Of learning the cycles of the people who live here: Sam is routinely the first awake, always sitting quietly in the living room with coffee and a tablet of news articles. She walks around with baskets of fruits and vegetables and spices and then spends the hottest parts of the day upstairs daydreaming on paper. Steve likes to hit the day running, working hard and fast before the sun bears down too hot, and then spends his afternoons oscillating between relaxation and small repairs. Iman comes by twice a week to discuss business with Sam and pick up things for delivery to the village. Bucky has found a way to fit into the ever-turning gears of their lives: he learns how to ask what things are called in French, slowly building his vocabulary; he helps Steve in the mornings so they can manage to do twice the work in half the time and then spends his afternoons being alone together with Sam, occasionally getting lost in rambling conversations; and he’s made tentative plans to let them both experiment with something called _trash polka_ on one of his limbs. He accepts the coffee and the kiss with a smile.

“Thanks, doll,” he grins at her, rakish, and delights in the blush barely visible under her copper cheeks.

“Only you could get away with calling a woman doll in 2020,” Steve rolls his eyes but leans down to accept his coffee and kiss from her too.

“Sam thinks I’m hot,” Bucky shrugs unrepentantly.

“You think you’re hot,” Steve shoots back.

“_Everyone_ thinks he’s hot,” Sam shrugs and pulls out one of her many glass pipes. They wander towards the pool pavilion as they pass the pipe back and forth, Steve pointing at various locations for possible plants, Sam telling Bucky what they’re called, and Bucky being oscillated back and forth between the two with the pipe like a volleyball.

“We should fill the pool soon, it’s getting hot again,” Sam steps lightly around it’s tiled edges. He wonders if she would be from Rivendell or the Greenwood. It’s narrow, but long, and has been sitting empty since Bucky arrived. It’s tucked behind the pavilion and overshadowed by rainbow eucalyptus trees, its mosaic of sea-glass tiles glinting in the flickering afternoon sunlight.

“Me and Bucky can clean it tomorrow, fill it the day after?” Steve steps down, barefoot, into its cavern and his voice echoes like a breaking dawn. The top lip of the pool is almost a full meter above his head. Sam hums in the affirmative and then her eyes fall fully on Bucky, seeming to see all of him at once without effort.

“You know how to swim right?” she asks. Bucky nods in confirmation and takes a small step back at her shark-like smile. He is perfectly aware that she has exactly as many teeth as she is supposed to, is now achingly familiar with the little gap between her two front teeth and her gold incisor caps, but in that moment Bucky feels like her mouth is full of knives.

“How would you feel about helping me teach some of my cousins? They’re all young children, very polite, but there’s too many for me to watch by myself,” she steps down into the pool with Steve, running her hands over some of the smaller tiles and not looking at Bucky at all.

“Um, I’ve never taught someone how to swim. I don’t even remember learning,” he stutters out.

Sam waves him off like clearing smoke, “you’ll be fine, I honestly just need someone to be a glorified lifeguard to make sure none of the little ones get too cocky.”

Bucky wants to say no for the simple fact that his experience with children is limited. Babies he can do, he loves babies, but that’s mostly because they can’t ask him insane questions and judge him. He wants to ask why Steve can’t do it, but something in the way Sam’s sharp eyes are assessing him from under her lashes, like she’s testing him, determining where his limits are, testing his commitment to being here, becoming a part of this community she’s built around herself, halts his rebuttal. She moves with more will and conviction than some of his previous C.O’s and he has no doubt she could control an army, let alone a gaggle of young children. Bucky takes a deep breath, feels it stretch his ribs around his lungs, counts to four, and then releases it in a long whoosh.

“Okay,” he smiles tentatively at her, hopeful that she’ll have mercy on him and play translator just a while longer when the children inevitably attempt to pull his sanity from his head.

“Excellent,” she hisses, and he swears her incisors flash at him like fangs. Bucky stares after her dumbly as she easily scales one of the pool walls to wander closer to her beloved eucalyptus.

“Dude,” Steve huffs.

“Don’t,” Bucky replies.

“_Dude_,” Steve repeats. Bucky hangs his head in defeat.

Steve laughs, “Don’t feel too bad, I’ve seen her reduce grown men to tears.” Bucky watches her climb the buttress roots of the rainbow eucalyptus like a hollow-boned bird and feels very certainly that he lives with a god of old. Steve must see the look on his face because he lays one paw-like hand on Bucky’s exposed shoulder and sighs out a commiserating “yeah”.

Sam conscripts them to help her harvest the cannabis in the greenhouse attached to the pavilion, which means, essentially, that she flits between Steve and Bucky with a basket to collect the aromatic buds while they do the hard work of clipping the bushes. She swans away as quickly as she came, the dogs trailing her swinging hips and soft, humming voice. Bucky spends the rest of the afternoon helping Steve rake leaves around the front of the estate into large stacks to be burned with the trash. When the sun begins its final descent they walk back, silently agreeing that it’s dinner time. Sam is in the outdoor kitchen when they approach and the now familiar crooning of John Legend is blasting through her speakers. It smells like fried rice and happiness as they get closer and Bucky can see the exact moment Steve’s eyes zero in on his target. Sam is frying tofu, a large bowl already close to overflowing at her side. She smiles at Bucky and he lingers in the back doorway just long enough to watch Steve try to charm her into giving him _just one, Sam, baby, light of my life, stars in my sky, may I pretty please have just one tofu?_ and watch Sam subsequently smack him with one of her tasting spoons. Steve hardly flinches, just continues reaching for the plate while she makes threatening noises and the joyous sound of familiar banter follows Bucky all the way into the shower.

***

He starts writing again, the kind of sci-fi daydreams that used to consume his waking hours before he got caught up in a war he had no business in. It’s nice, changing his morning routine just enough to stretch his mind, and it’s the change that has him noticing. A bout of insomnia hits, as it is want to do, and it’s sometime between three and four am when he hears Steve exiting his room. Steve’s door opening always creates a vacuum of air because they both sleep with their windows open, and so Bucky’s door will briefly pull tighter to its frame before relaxing. He hears Steve one morning when he’s hunched over his desk elbow deep in a half formed plot, and the sound doesn’t come again until almost 90 minutes later. Not that he’s keeping tabs. He just. Likes knowing where people will be and when. Bucky hears the same pattern of opening and closing for the next few weeks, enough time to assume that it’s a routine all its own, taking place a mere half an hour before he usually rises. As the insomnia continues, so does the pattern, and eventually Bucky’s curiosity gets the best of him. He makes a point of not sneaking out of his room. At 3:30am, he walks out of his room with his laptop and fixes himself a cup of coffee. It’s a black tar kind of night, moonless and heavy, but Bucky can feel the slightest breeze snaking around his ankles. The front door is open when he wanders into the living room but there’s no sign of Steve on the porch. Bucky doesn’t want to snoop, doesn’t want to start his new life by repeating patterns of his old one; so he stretches out on the loveseat with his back to the door and starts tapping away on the keyboard. Steve returns exactly when he is supposed to, the sound of his upbeat footsteps weaving through the rhythm of Bucky’s writing.

“Oh,” is what Steve says when he halts in the doorway, his reflection over Bucky’s shoulder visible in the dim light of his laptop.

“Morning,” Bucky responds and stretches his hands out just enough to reach once more for his coffee, the gravel in his voice sounding too rough even for him.

“Can’t sleep?” Steve reaches for the out like a lifeline and Bucky lets him.

“It be like that sometimes,” he shrugs, and sets his cup down to scroll through the last few pages of world-building.

“I feel you,” Steve responds and then beats a hasty retreat back to his room. Bucky pointedly does not look up to see whatever Steve is trying to hide with his body, just leans back and resumes his writing. His curiosity has been satisfied, he saw the reflection of Steve even if he didn’t get confirmation of his whereabouts. Sometimes just the echo is enough.

***

Routine evolves into ritual; on the nights where Bucky can’t sleep and is instead forced to write, he will perch in the cool living room, maybe open a couple curtains just to watch the moon shadows crawl across the landscape, and sometimes he’ll watch Steve leave with his messenger bag, and sometimes he’ll watch Steve return, and sometimes he’ll get to do both. Eventually, Steve must realize that Bucky’s not going to ask, and instead of going back to his room Steve will drop his bag on the opposite couch and fetch his own mug of coffee and then he’ll return. Sometimes he sits quietly nursing his cup until Sam inevitably stumbles down the stairs looking like a train wreck, but most often he’ll talk to Bucky abut aliens and local cryptids and body horror in media. Sometimes he’ll pull out a little notebook and draw while they talk, and sometimes he’ll even offer to show Bucky the doodles. Sometimes Sam wanders down and invites them up to enjoy the hookah and they spend witching hours smoking and talking and falling asleep sprawled on couches only to rise hours later to greet the day’s work. And because insomnia hits hard, Bucky’s brain picks up the patterns. Steve exists in doorways. If he isn’t leaving, he’s returning, but he lingers in the portals between spaces, always seeming half there. Bucky looks closer, pays more attention, and sees the truth. Steve moves like a man who’s being dragged into a grave, but he has eyes like a man who’s already been buried. It’s hard to see, hidden under sunshine smiles and a genuine zest for life, but there are ghosts in Steve’s eyes, ghosts that bite and snarl and screech.

Bucky sees and does not ask, just continues to write about people aging millennia in the breathless shadows of space and time. He watches Steve slowly unravel into their newfound friendship, watches the tension drain away and the sassy asshole bloom under Bucky’s ministrations. Very slowly, and yet in no time at all, Steve becomes one of Bucky’s best friends.

Bucky picks up on Sam’s patterns too. The way she spends entire days furiously scribbling in one of her many notebooks only to suddenly stop everything and lay down for a week, heeding only to Steve’s prodding requests to eat and drink. The way she’ll be consumed entirely by her latest project: another mural on a quadrant of unclaimed wall, brewing several large bottles of wine, harvesting fruits and vegetables, tattooing nonstop, until she capitulates to Bucky or Steve’s request to take a break and have a drink. Sometimes she lets him linger in her studio, sometimes she pulls him into the whirlwind of her mind and teaches him something new and beautiful. She is almost certainly always high in some measure, but Bucky notices her fluctuating intake as well. Her days spent, presumably, in bed fill the house with the scent of incense smoke and cannabis exhalations, while her days spent focusing on a stream of work fill the air with freshly ground coffee and fusion music and cannabis exhalations. There are always suitcases under her eyes that Bucky never asks about, but he knows their shape and weight, the frayed lining and scuffed corners, and he loves her a little more on the days where she doesn’t even pretend to act like they’re not weighing her down.

And then.

One day, Bucky is tasked by Iman to bring lunch upstairs to Sam and Steve, who are apparently working on a leg sleeve for someone together, and a part of Bucky’s ancestral lizard brain itches with the request, like he’s missing something, because immediately after the sandwiches are handed to him, Iman disappears out the back door towards the orchard. Bucky takes the steps slowly, gives them time to hear his approach because while his lizard brain niggles, his evolved brain balks at the idea of sneaking around trying to see something they’re not ready to share. They either don’t hear him, or don’t care, because when Bucky clears the doorway he sees them both with their shirts off, Steve’s face buried in Sam’s bare breasts, reclining proprietarily in a corner of the red couch. Sam’s hands card through Steve’s hair and rub his shoulder blades comfortingly, lovingly, while Steve continues to breathe into the warm skin. Bucky’s fairly used to half naked bodies at this point, having seen plenty of Sam’s clients leaving with some part of their body exposed in one way or another, so it’s less the nudity and more the circumstances of said nudity that startles him. Just enough for a gasp to escape and blood to rush to his face. Sam looks up slowly from where she’s half covered in Steve’s bulk.

“Hi Bucky, lunchtime?” she says, and the rasp and tenor of her voice itch at Bucky’s brain some more, sounding less throaty with passion and more hoarse with formless grief than he would expect.

“Yeah, Iman made sandwiches,” he manages to croak out as Steve lifts his head just enough to turn and pillow his cheek on her left breast. When Bucky looks closer he can see the faint blush rising under Steve’s tan skin, but the longer he studies the more he sees. They’re not in the middle of a tryst, it seems, because both of their eyes are a little puffy and red around the edges and their hold on each other seems more like anchors than anything else.

“Are you guys okay?” he clears his throat and moves to set the plate on the coffee table next to a bong.

“Yes, darling, let me just go get cleaned up and I’ll be right back out,” Sam wiggles her way out from under Steve’s chest and shamelessly walks into the bathroom. Steve doesn’t move to put his shirt back on, just leans back into the corner of the couch, a space for Sam between his legs for her to recline on him. Steve turns his head to face Bucky with a calculated look on his face once the bathroom door clicks shut.

“You know what touch starvation is, yes?” Bucky nods.

“And you know what love languages are?” Bucky nods again.

“Imagine being starved for years and not knowing how to ask for sustenance,” Steve pins Bucky to the couch with his gaze, calm and unwavering in his devotion to someone who clearly means the world to him.

Bucky nods again, understanding tugging his lips into a frown, and he wonders about the kind of sadness that sinks you, cement shoes, to the bottom of the sea, salt-water in the lungs and the weight of living bearing down from above.

When Sam emerges from the bathroom in one of her wispy sundresses he offers her the freshly packed bong and presses a soft kiss to her hand while she holds the hit in her lungs. He sees her eyes water, but no tears fall, and the smile she gives him is heartbreaking and ephemeral and Bucky falls a little more in love with everything she has been forced to become. He feels himself fall a little bit in love with Steve, too, as he watches Sam relax into his steadying weight and Bucky notices more and more the casual soft touches he gives to her. It shocks Bucky only minutely, the affection for the both of them swelling and sweeping through his chest, because he feels so privileged to be able to see two people love and trust each other with the frailest parts of themselves. He is reminded, inexorably, of Harry and Hermione’s dance in _The Deathly Hallows_, the transcendent love of a wordless scene playing behind his eyelids as he watches Steve hand Sam one of his carrot slivers while they discuss media bias.

They make idle chat throughout lunch and the subsequent smoke session before the afternoon siesta, and somehow Bucky has inched close enough for one of Sams arms to snake around his upper calf and rub reassuring circles. His lizard brain understands, right before he drops off to sleep, that Iman was testing him.

When Bucky wakes up a few hours later, head foggy and skin sun-warm, Sam has somehow ended up on his chest, her legs between his, and a pillow has been placed under his head. He takes the moment of delightful grogginess before he is fully awake to stroke a hand down Sam’s warm back and press a kiss to her temple and feel the puff of her breath on his clavicle. When he turns his head to peer through the open windows at the sky he can see clouds approaching from the west and hear wind chimes singing. When he turns his head back around he spots Steve, quiet and unobtrusive in the way of very large men who used to be very small, curled into himself and sketching at the opposite end of the couch. Bucky smiles at the furrow in Steve’s brow and the focused flit of his electric eyes between the curve of Sam’s ass and the paper. Bucky figures they might as well be done for the day, the warming sun and the solid weight of Sam on his chest lull him back into a doze, and he contents himself to watch the clouds roll by. He hears Steve’s pencil scratch and the rush of motorcycles outside the walls of the estate, but he mostly hears the spinning gears of his own mind and the birdsongs drifting on the breeze. When Sam wakes up there are definitive sleep creases on her cheeks and a rested calmness to her shoulders that Bucky only then notices had been missing for a couple weeks. He hugs her tighter for a breath and then releases her so she can lean up and meet his gaze. There is a shy gratefulness swimming in her autumn leaf eyes and Bucky gives in to his urge to press a lingering kiss to her cheek. She returns the kiss with one of her own, but instead of his cheek or nose or forehead like she has been want to do, she presses the kiss to his lips, soft and sweet and tasting like the pomegranates they had with their lunch and the faint note of old coffee and ash he imagines always lingers in the back of her throat. Her mouth is warmer than the sun shining on the side of Bucky’s face but she pulls back before he can fully memorize the texture. Her eyes are half lidded and assessing when they pull back, but Bucky just crushes her to his chest and presses another, more comforting kiss to her temple and ignores the way she exhales like her lungs have just been released from a strangle-hold. When he looks over, Steve is assessing him too, but there’s a glimmer of playfulness in his dark gaze and Bucky’s mind spins.

Amidst the chaos of questions of what and how and when and what somehow Natasha’s voice slices through and smacks him upside the head with a derisive _fuck your gender roles and friends can be kissable too, idiot and love won in 2014, Jamie, it can be and do whatever the fuck it wants in 2020_. He remembers the fire of her hair under pale winter skies, the way she wore love like a handmade scarf: a little holey and uneven, a little faded, tossed about heavy rinse cycles perhaps too often, but still soft and dependable and reeking of affection. He remembers the way she played her cards close to the chest, but still handed out advice and steadying touch to any of her friends who looked like they were adrift and left wanting. He mentally promises to call her soon, and then his mind spins off again into all of the ways Sam and Natasha are similar. How they tell you they’re showing you everything, and you believe it because they’re showing you everything, and yet every time you turn to look they’ve got a new card pressed to their chests, a new layer of gossamer added to make up for whatever has just been lost. If Natasha’s heart was a jewel, cut and refined and inevitably shrunken with every new glittering facet, then Sam’s heart was a singing bowl, a vessel meant to hold nothing but air and secret songs of specific silences.

Sam gets up, straightens her dress, and steps into the bathroom while Steve and Bucky stare each other down.

Steve smirks, “you call that a kiss?”

“I’ll endeavor to do better next time,” Bucky sits up and cracks his spine, stretches his arms and legs, soaks in as much sun as he can.

“See that you do,” Steve nods like he’s banging a gavel and returns to his sketch. Bucky wonders if Steve is a friend meant for kissing, too. They spend the rest of the afternoon lounging and smoking and eventually, trying the new pomegranate-ginger wine Sam has concocted. _I think I’ll call it Gingergranate, or Pomegringer, whaddya think?_ she tells them as they take the first sip and then she cackles like the mad scientist she secretly is when they both proceed to choke and laugh until they’re crying.

Time moves slowly, sunbeams moving like honey across the tiled floor as they shift and rearrange around each other constantly. Bucky watches them get lost in a conversation about music theory and scale patterns and eventually submits himself to be a canvas for their combined markers. Sam draws birds of prey across his ribs, tickling and prodding him with dirty jokes and admonishing him to stay still while she details feathers. Steve dots flowers and stars across his left arm where it hangs off the couch, the quiet tenor of his voice lulling all of them into a state of calm safety. Bucky mourns when he washes their work away, but contents himself in the pictures they took before they released him and the twin kisses he can still feel warming under the apples of his cheeks.

***

The second time Bucky kisses Sam, weeks later, she’s hunched over her drawing table and flipping through pages of tracing paper when Bucky deposits a tall glass of iced tea and a coaster in the corner next to her pipe. He hopes she’ll reach for one and notice the other. Bucky lays a gentle hand on the back of her neck, stroking the fine hairs under her bun, and she hums vaguely in response.

He says, “dinner will be ready in an hour, eat up here or outside?” and leans his head over a bit to see what she’s working on now. Oddly enough, it’s a blueprint of a building, suspended over water. Sam hums again, pulling her brain out of her schematics long enough to answer with, “outside, please.”

“So fucking polite,” Bucky laughs and presses a kiss into the top of her head. It must somehow jostle her from the spell of dimensions because she drops her pens and rolls her chair back from being pressed right against the desk. She leans into his side and wraps an arm around his waist. Her lashes look so long from where Bucky stands above her, the faint grey hairs at the crown of her bun tell him she has aged beyond her young years and he is amazed that she has retained her youthful joy in spite of -or maybe because of- it. She’s gorgeous, and brilliant, and so easy to talk to and exist with and Bucky’s heart swells with affection once more and he wonders if she knows the effect she has on the people around her, if she knows how easy she is to love.

“Hey,” he whispers, right hand tickling aimless patterns on the side of her neck and under her jaw when she turns to stab him in the gut with her sharp chin.

“Can I kiss you?” he brings his left hand up to trace the edge of her jaw some more, ever fascinated by the shape and cut of it. Her eyes sparkle with mirth when she nods at him, but otherwise she doesn’t move, so Bucky leans down and cradles her head in his hands and presses his lips to hers. He doesn’t push his tongue between the parted seam of her lips, but he does break and rejoin the kiss over and over again to taste the various angles until she’s gasping and her lips are swollen and spit-slick.

“Thanks,” he whispers against her lips when he finally pulls back.

“Anytime,” she mouths, eyes half-lidded and intensely dark as they roam his face and Bucky wonders, briefly, what she notices first when she looks at him.

“If you’re not down in an hour I’ll come get you,” he promises, the temptation of her lips a new drug. She nods and releases the grip she has on his chest and Bucky walks away. Steve is in the stairwell, leaning imperiously against the wall of the landing with a smirk on his perfect face.

“Better?” Bucky asks, eyebrow arched. Steve nods with a chuckle.

“Sure,” Steve’s smirk grows wider and Bucky is hit with a vision of a younger Steve grinning at his friends like a little shit, trying to convince them into a scheme that will invariably end with scolding and/or injury. Bucky feels the bait dangling in front of him and he wants to bite. He steps right into Steve’s perfect personal space, chests almost touching, noses a breath apart. Steve is just the scantest inch taller than him, but all it does is give Bucky a better angle to sneak his lips right into the space below his.

“Seeing is so rarely believing, though, isn’t it? Eyes can be deceived so easily,” Bucky ghosts his breath over Steve’s plush, red mouth, a challenge in his eyes. If Steve wants to kiss him too, he should be honest about it.

Steve’s eyes are tracking the purse of his lips, heavy lidded and clouded with restrained wanting.

The first time he kisses Steve, Bucky tastes lightning. Steve is the one who ends their standoff with an exhale that ends as soon as they’re pressed together, skilled and direct when he rubs his tongue along the partition of Bucky’s lips and wraps one soft arm around his waist. Bucky moves one hand to grip the back of Steve’s neck, electricity skipping through his system, and he thinks none of us kiss like we’re friends. He can feel it, the curling heartache of want unfolding between his ribs, stretching towards the woman who caresses him and the man currently clutching him tighter. If Sam’s kisses are like fresh, cool water on a soul set ablaze, then Steve’s kisses are the spark that lit the fire in the first place. They part but moments later, the purse of their lips having left impressions on each other, and Bucky refuses to look away from Steve’s sea glass eyes. There are stories hidden there, swirling amongst the depths, and Bucky is finally close enough to notice the little streaks of green arcing through the blue.

“How’d I do?” Bucky’s ego asks.

“I suppose we can keep you,” Steve responds, eyes twinkling again. Bucky laughs, pats Steve’s waist where his other hand invariably found its home, and leaves him to to it.

Bucky freaks out, just a bit, as he’s laying in bed that night, about the consequences of kissing both of them in the space of a few minutes. About the desire he saw, naked, on Sam’s face and the want of Steve’s fingers curled around him. But Steve’s expression was clear and happy when Bucky kissed him so he shakes off his father’s Protestant fear and his mother’s Catholic guilt and instead contents himself to simply be pulled in by the inexorable gravity of their combined system.

***

It takes two days for Bucky to muster the courage to ask.

“What does it mean to kiss you?” he murmurs into the space between songs before Steve re-emerges from his room. Sam’s eyes cut to him so swiftly he’s not sure she wasn’t already looking at him.

“Do you want my answer or the one that will give you permission to court _him_?” she murmurs back, just as quiet, but with a defensive set to her shoulders.

“Yours,” he replies honestly and watches her shoulders tighten more.

“I can’t tell you what it means to kiss me, but I can tell you what I mean when I kiss both of you.” Bucky nods.

“I kiss you because you’re beautiful, Bucky Barnes. Beautiful and haunted and with eyes that ask only to be understood. I kiss you because you’re bright and warm and I am a moth drawn in by your flame,” Sam looks at him through her lashes but he feels like she’s hiding under the guise of seduction. He thinks the sultry rasp of her voice is a shield. He wants to peel himself open and shelter her there, safe and warm next to his beating heart.

“I kiss Steve because we are Charon and Pluto: tidally locked. We’ve known each other since second grade, we don’t know how to not be a part of each other’s lives. We’ve been everything you can be to another person: friends, therapists, lovers, business partners, roommates, tutors, anything you can think of- we’ve been for each other,” Sam pauses, sips her coffee, meets Bucky’s eyes, and then shifts her gaze to where Steve has been standing in the doorway for half a minute.

“I kiss Steve because he sees every dirty-rotten-bleeding-broken part of me, and loves me anyway. His heart has always been more generous than mine, but he will hesitate to let you feel the extent of his boundless affections because he doesn’t want to hurt either of us with a decision that has already been made,” Sam turns her gaze back to Bucky, solemn and so full of love that he can feel the force of it cracking apart his ribs and lodging into his heart.

“Don’t let him hesitate, Bucky,” Sam gets up with her cup and tucks her phone under her arm and then she leans down to whisper in Bucky’s ear, her breath tickling his growing hair, “he needs more than a moon in his sky.” Sam presses a butterfly kiss to his cheek before moving to where Steve stands in the doorway with his arms crossed. She stands in front of him for a moment, eyes searching his stony face, and then she leans up and waits for him to slouch enough for her to press a kiss to his cheek, too, and Bucky watches Steve’s face crack as she walks away. When Steve turns back to him, there is affection and heartbreak in his eyes, so Bucky holds out his hand. Steve doesn’t take it, but he does join him on the couch, a marionette with the strings cut, collapsed into the cushions.

There are roosters cawing, birds are chirping, dogs are barking, motorcycles are starting to zip down the road, and two men are sitting statues in a silent house. Bucky can’t even hear Sam moving around upstairs, but when he strains his ears he hears the schhhtick of a lighter so he assumes she’s watching the sun rise over the wall.

“I’d marry her if she’d let me,” Steve whispers into the pale golden light slithering through the curtains. Bucky stays silent, reminds himself that a love so pure and soul-deep needs no explanation and that the world is not always kind to its lovers.

“We were in college. She was in San Francisco and I was in New York and we were Face-timing and making plans to road trip over the summer, but it was Christmas and her apartment was filled with lights and old music and the ghosts of people she loved. And I could hear my family’s noises echoing through her speakers and back to me and I said, _‘what are we doing? why aren’t we together? marry me’_ and she looked at me from across the room like I was more than just a face in her computer and she said, _‘i’m not the marrying kind. But I can promise to love you for the rest of our lives, anyway,’_ and that was that.” Steve reaches out to grab Bucky’s hand and leans a little closer.

“What did she mean, by hurting either of us?” he asks, brain tripping and slipping down rabbit tunnels.

“She knows me too well,” Steve laughs humorlessly, “I haven’t been in a serious relationship in years because the last time I was, it hurt her, and it hurt them, and I am loathe to put anyone, least of all her, in that position again.”

“Were they…jealous?” Bucky leans ever closer into Steve’s space, wants to inhale him.

“No. But Amelia was paranoid. Sam tried to distance herself, moved to the other side of the planet to give her peace of mind, but it broke her heart. It didn’t work out in the end, and Sam offered me a place to mend my own heart in the meantime, and then I never left,” Steve presses their foreheads together as he speaks, whispers the words into Bucky’s exhales.

The second time Bucky kisses Steve, it tastes like heartache and memory, no clear line between the two. Bucky languishes in their kiss, the soft smooth feel of Steve’s petal-soft lips sealing their mouths together so that their tongues can explore. He licks at the back of Steve’s top teeth, sucks at his bottom lip, breaks and reseals their mouths so he can taste the same spots over again. Steve tangles both of his hands in Bucky hair, cradles the back of his head and presses closer so that their chests are a breath apart. With his newly freed hand, Bucky presses his palm directly to Steve’s heart, feels the beat of it vibrate into his arm, lets it set the tempo of their kisses. Steve keeps leaning further and further into Bucky’s space and Bucky’s hands abandon their posts in favor of wrapping around Steve’s ballerina waist and tugging until Steve is in his lap, long legs folding around Bucky’s hips and the plush curve of Steve’s ass pressed into Bucky’s thighs. The weight of a full grown man in his lap is heavenly, and something deeply satisfied blooms in Bucky’s chest so he pulls Steve ever closer until he is forced to lean up and angle his head down in order to continue stroking Bucky’s tongue with his own. They kiss and nibble at each other until Bucky can feel the heat of the sun filling the room and the sweat beading on the back of his neck. When he pulls away, Steve’s eyes are half-lidded with want and his mouth is a blood orange, singing for another bite. Bucky bites, just once more, softly, and then he leans back into the couch and strokes a hand through Steve’s mussed hair.

“Did Gabriel try to make her choose?” Bucky presses his forehead to Steve’s with the question, tell his muscles to memorize the feel of him in his lap, and considers very carefully the idea unfolding in his head.

“He was a little uncomfortable with how close me and Sam are, despite our assurances that we were strictly platonic at the time. I think when he left Sam was equal parts heartbroken and relieved. Bucky,” Steve leans back and puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders as if preparing to jump and run.

“Bucky,” he repeats, “I don’t know how not to love her, but I want you to know that’s it’s not a choice. Amelia and Gabriel couldn’t understand that, that we could love each other but still give ourselves to them entirely simply because they asked.”

“Is there a package deal option? Two for price of three, perhaps?” Bucky smirks back, flirty and about 60% in love.

“What.” Steve whispers, eyes darting back and forth between Bucky’s.

“C’mon,” Bucky scooches them off the couch, tugs Steve’s hand so that they’re walking upstairs into the loft, where Sam is, as expected, sitting in an open window frame watching the sunrise with smoke falling from her lips.

“Sweetheart,” Bucky drags Steve to where she is perched.

“You and Steve belong to each other, yes?” Sam turns wide brown eyes to him, joint burning away between her fingertips, and nods.

“What if I said I wanted to belong to both of you, too?” Bucky takes a mental picture of both of their expressions: Sam’s is disbelieving and shocked, Steve’s is suspicious and hopeful and they are both gorgeous in the bright pink sun rays of early morning.

“What if I said I was in love with the way you love each other, what if I said we could all belong together?” Bucky looks at Sam, knows that it’s her who has to say yes. Steve has a generous heart, true, but Sam has a selfless one.

“Be selfish,” he whispers to her, watches her eyes dart to his and Steve’s joined hands and then their eyes and then back again. She must see something in Steve’s expression because she nods at the naked want in Bucky’s. Bucky drops Steve’s hand just long enough to step into Sam’s space, just long enough to cradle her weary face in his newly calloused palms and kiss her like oxygen. Kissing Sam right after kissing Steve is a revelation unto itself. Steve will fight for dominance, and that’s thrilling, but there is something intoxicating and powerful in the way Sam yields under Bucky’s lips. She tastes like ash and coffee and the salt-heavy darkness at the bottom of the sea and Bucky wants to drink of her until he, too, is drowning. She lets him tilt her head back, lays her hands on his chest and spreads her legs so he can step between them and keep her balanced on the window ledge, but otherwise lets him control the pace and angle of their kiss. Bucky sucks at her full lips, sweeps his tongue over the perfect roundness of her mouth and then licks inside, tastes the coffee and siren songs on her tongue. Sam tilts her head further, presses closer to him, and Bucky feels all of her sharp angles smooth over as he cradles her in his arms. When they pull apart, panting, Sam closes her eyes and drops her forehead to Bucky’s clavicle.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Sam’s voice is velvet wrapped steel, so Bucky looks at her. Looks at the flush in her cheeks and the breathlessness of her stuttering chest, at the spit-slick desire on her mouth and the lonely love shining from her eyes. Turns so he can look at Steve and the blush creeping up his neck, the arousal swimming in his sea-glass eyes, the parted pout of his mouth, and the clenched hands at his sides.

“Kiss him, then. Prove me right,” Bucky cradles her hands in his, presses a kiss to her wrists, lets her go and steps back so that Steve can take his place.

“Kiss her like it’s your wedding day,” he whispers to Steve and watches in fascinated delight as his eyes darken and his face lights up. Steve holds Sam gingerly, wraps his large hands around her waist and leans his head down so they can make eye contact. He whispers something to her, too low for Bucky to hear, but he can see the way her expression grows painfully tender as she laces her fingers around Steve’s neck.

When Steve kisses Sam, Bucky experiences one horrifying technicolor moment of doubt.

Because to watch them kiss is to witness the birth of a star, and for a singular atomic moment Bucky feels like extraneous cosmic particles caught in and then subsequently cast from the riptide of creation. And then Bucky remembers that love is a force of nature, that its gravity will always pull him back into the rotation, that the three-body problem is only a problem if you’re uncomfortable with unpredictability. Bucky watches them kiss, the proprietary way Steve’s hands roam Sam’s back as he slides his tongue into her mouth, the way Sam scratches lightly at the back of Steve’s neck as she angles her head up and up for more of his taste on her tongue, and he feels the unpredictable future stretching ahead of him like infinite trails of starlight.

When Steve pulls back his eyes stay locked on Sam and this time Bucky catches the I do, too that she whispers into his lips.

“What did you have in mind, exactly?” Sam talks out the side of her mouth at Bucky, but she remains cradled in Steve’s arms. Bucky sees the love there, sees the test too, and is more than satisfied with the surge of affection behind his ribs in the space where jealousy could’ve once made a home.

“You know what I’m suggesting,” he waffles, a familiar but not bad kind of nervous energy thrumming through him.

“If you can’t say it we shouldn’t do it,” she responds, quick as a whip and stinging just as much.

“A poly relationship. When I asked what it meant to kiss you, I wanted the answer that would give me permission to court both of you. You said Charon and Pluto, I was thinking more along the lines of the Centauron star system,” Bucky shrugs like his heart isn’t trying to fly from his chest.

“What?” Steve says again, and Bucky’s cock gives a vague twitch at the lightening fast image of a beautifully fucked out Steve forgetting everything but the word please. Sam hops down from the ledge, and steps toe to toe with Bucky.

“Alpha Centauri A and B, we thought it was a binary star system where B revolved around A. And we thought Proxima Centauri was just the next closest star,” she says to Steve but keeps her eyes on Bucky.

“And then we discovered that Proxima was actually revolving around both of them, that the three of them have been locked in a very old dance for millennia,” Bucky finishes, hand reaching out to cautiously grab Sam’s and he is relieved when she doesn’t pull away.

“So, you’re suggesting that all three of us be together? Like, she’s my girlfriend and you’re my boyfriend and both of us are her boyfriends?” Steve inches closer like he’s approaching a particularly anxious pair of bunnies and Bucky is ridiculously charmed by the careful concern on his face.

“_Yes,_” Bucky says, with feeling.

“Sam?” Steve grabs her other hand with both of his and Bucky gets to watch overwhelmed affection cross her face for a glorious moment. She looks at him and they communicate silently, eyebrows flickering and nostrils flaring and eyes widening and lips pursing.

“Fuck today, amirite?” Sam finally turns back to Bucky, blinding smile stretching across her face, gold incisors shining like treasure.

“Fuck today, doll,” Bucky replies softly, moves into her space and feels Steve moves into his and somehow they end up in a tangle of loving limbs and Bucky peers at the sun shining over the nearby treetops and slanting onto their huddled bodies like a benediction and he breathes a silent _thank you_.


	2. Part II: Alpha Centauri B

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Crisis, y’all. I drank a six-shot mocha and then a four shot-mocha today so I could finish it in time for Chrimmus.  
Un’beta’d, we die like half the universe here.  
If you point out a mistake I’ll fix. Sorry. Part three maybe by Valentine’s Day???  
Anyway, here’s some smut and very little plot.

Steve’s mom likes to joke that he and Sam trade chaos, that one of them has to at least pretend to be the voice of reason. But the truth is, if Sam is going out on a limb, Steve is probably the one who dared her to do it, and if Steve is getting into a fight, Sam is more than likely the one who threw the first punch. Steve figures, in retrospect, that the universe was bound to send someone their way to balance the scales of their microcosm. He thought that person could’ve been Gabe.

He’s never been so happy to be wrong.

Sure, Steve had entertained the idea of himself and Sam and someone else, a long time ago when he was a naive punk wreaking havoc in the back alleys of Brooklyn and watching amateur porn. Bisexual threesomes that electrified him: the group laying together in the afterglow affecting him more than the man and woman on their knees sucking cock and trading saliva-slicked kisses. Imagined himself as the one pinned between a man and a woman, came hard and often to those imaginings.

And then they grew up. Changed their dreams over and over again. Forgot about what they wanted for themselves in their attempts to please everyone else. Moved to opposite sides of the same country for no reason. Went on vacations with lovers that didn’t stay. Moved in with lovers that should’ve left. Left them instead. Fell into bed together. And then again. And again. Denied everything except the irrevocable truth that they belonged together. Acknowledged that truth long past due. Still ended up here.

_Here_ being a decade later, somehow back at the start, a little jaded and worn, a little heartbroken, a lot more experienced, but still the same punk kids who deep down always knew what they wanted.

_Here_ being sprawled out in Sam’s king-size with two fans on full blast because it is far too hot in the loft and she’s squished between his and Bucky’s bulk, the poor thing. Steve can see the sweat beading on her upper lip but she looks so blissfully content that he just nudges one of the fans with his toes so it points more directly at her.

“I’ll install the AC myself, swear to god. I’ll even build a bigger bed frame so this whole room can just be bed, just say the word, swear to fuck I’ll fuckin’ do it,” Bucky curses into the back of Steve’s hand where it’s cradling Sam’s head, but otherwise doesn’t move from where he has one arm trapped under her and the other slung over her and resting on Steve’s hip. Sam hums and wiggles her ass back into Bucky’s groin to make him gasp and consider the benefit of hot and sweaty cuddles so she can resume peacefully dozing in the sauna between their bodies. Steve presses in closer so she can use his bicep as her pillow. Sam throws a leg over Steve’s hip, presses her warm core against his half-hard dick while somehow also pushing back harder against what Steve is sure is Bucky’s fully hard dick. Bucky shifts so his left leg slots between hers, his thigh pressing between hers and up against Steve’s now straining erection. Steve moves his right hand from where it’s tangled in Bucky’s hair to cup the tantalizing curve of his ass and press his leg more firmly against the both of them.

Steve thinks back to shared teen years when Sam’s body started filling out and boys started noticing her but she was too busy studying or practicing or looking at Steve instead. Remembers some of his teammates on the swim team leering at her when she would wait for him to drive her home after practice, jealous smitten girls badmouthing her for always being around him, jealous boys trying to start fights with him over her, none of them understanding that she was always first and foremost his best friend. That she waited for him after practice so she could convince him to go get fro-yo instead of going back to an empty house to wallow in grief; that she stuck close because she knew the agony of having a brain perpetually set on self-destruct; that she loved him when he couldn’t love anything, not even himself.

He recalls a party they went to the summer after graduation when she showed up in a pair of tiny shorts and one of Steve’s stolen soccer jerseys and he had struggled through several hours of watching her dance before giving up and throwing her high ass over his shoulder and taking her home and finally fucking her until the dawn came calling. Steve mostly remembers the morning after (because all youthful sex is kinda shitty), when he woke to her running fingers lightly over the crook of his nose and the bow of his lips, her makeup smeared and her breath reeking of bad decisions and joy. She had grinned at him and tried to play it casual, fed him some cheesy line from a rom-com to make him laugh, but Steve saw the dwindling light in her eyes and heaved her close for a gross morning kiss. Steve can’t remember the details of the conversation, but he knows he kept her close and that they whispered daydreams and far-off plans in between kisses and caresses. He knows that that was the day they decided they belonged to each other, whatever iteration that took.

“Stop that,” Steve commands, feels the faint shiver make its way down Sam’s body and the echoing rumble coming from Bucky’s chest. He wants to fuck her, absolutely loves fucking her, and he wants to show Bucky how to perfectly fuck her, wants Bucky to learn how to fuck him, but they’ve had a morning of revelations, they should probably take things slow.

“But Steve,” she has the audacity to blink up at him with her doe eyes and Steve has known this woman his whole life, has probably loved her his whole life, knows all her tells and tricks, but he still wants to rip her stupid dress off -because he _knows_ she’s not wearing anything underneath- and consume her whenever she looks at him like that.

“I’m not fucking you before we take our boyfriend out for a date, Samadhi,” he says sternly, reminds himself that Bucky deserves to be woo’d, even if they’re doing it backwards.

Bucky, who is so easy to adore, with his stupid fluffy hair that he grows out specifically to spite the military that used him up and spit him out and his tree trunk thighs that Steve wants to die between. The crows feet at his eyes that crinkle and scrunch with his nose whenever he laughs with his whole body and the calloused hands that give Steve goosebumps.

Bucky, who laughs at all of Steve’s stupid jokes and listens when Sam speaks, who not only wants to know, but understand. Who looks for and finds beauty in unorthodox places because he accepts the universe as it is: perfect and deliberate.

Bucky, who wants to love even the parts of Steve that are in love with Sam, who kisses her like she’s the world and kisses him like he’s drowning.

Bucky, who is giving Steve a considering look that sets his blood on fire.

“Can we consider breakfast in bed as a date? Cause I kinda wanna see you fuck her,” Bucky says as his hand slowly starts to rub up and down Steve’s side while his other arm, wrapped under Sam’s waist, trails up to stroke the fabric under her breasts and he pushes his ass back into Steve’s hands for a moment before slowly grinding his hips forward into Sam’s and suddenly the heat is stifling and they’re all wearing too many clothes.

Steve groans and drops his head into Sam’s warm neck, breathes in the scent of her perfume oil and sweat and does not think about the day he gets to be between the two of them.

“Shouldn’t we take this slow, talk things out a bit more?” Steve tries to be the sensible one because Sam has made it clear that she is of no help whatsoever.

“Will you feel some kind of way if I take her out on dates, just the two of us? Or if I fuck her without you?” Bucky shoots back calmly, ignoring entirely the way Steve’s body twitches with arousal and the low whine in Sam’s throat.

“Will you feel some kind of way if I do the same to him, darling? Take him out and fuck him without you? Cause I won’t feel anything but happy when you two fuck without me, when you spend time together, because all I feel about either of you is love and happiness. If you want to slow down, Steve, let’s slow down. If you want me to leave so you two can take a minute, I’ll do that, too. I just want whatever will make us all happy,” Bucky says and Steve plunges headfirst into being hopelessly in love instead of just filled to the brim with love.

“What’ll make you happy? Right now, what do you want?” Steve asks quickly, eyes locked on the expanding darkness in Bucky’s, presses closer so he can almost kiss him over Sam’s shoulder. He can feel her relaxing more into their hold, the tiniest rocking of her hips that tells him she’s getting off on this.

“I want to eat her out while you suck my dick,” Bucky blurts out, eyes wide. Sam groans into the meat of Steve’s shoulder where she’s hidden her face and her hips snap so hard into Steve’s that he can almost certainly feel her hardened clit against the head of his cock through both of their clothes. God, she’s probably starting to soak through her dress and Bucky’s shorts.

Shit.

“Sam, what do you want baby?” Bucky whispers into her ear, tongue peeking out to trace the shell of it and Steve’s hand grips his hip in retaliation for making his attempt at being the sensible one fail so spectacularly.

“Oh god,” Steve feels her whimper into his neck before she raises her head to meet Bucky’s eye over her shoulder, “I want to see you and Steve fuck,” she whispers, eyes blown wide and dark as she watches Bucky’s tongue trace his lips.

“Steve?” She turns to look at him and Steve looks at both of their lustful expressions, looks at the way she’s absently grinding back on Bucky’s dick and _Jesus Christ_ is Steve really trying to turn down the opportunity to see Bucky’s dick? Or even better, see Sam spread out on Bucky’s dick?

No, no he is not.

“God, I want everything,” he says, expression pained and he curls in tighter so he can clutch them both closer and Sam makes a little squeaking sound before going completely lax under their combined weight.

Look, there are certainly arguments for why he should try harder to slow them down, but Steve has never claimed to be a perfect man, he just tries to be a good one. Most of the time. Apparently being a ‘good man’ flies directly out the window when he’s got the woman he loves and the man he loves in bed with him looking at him and each other like they want to eat and be eaten alive.

“Fuck,” Steve says, with feeling, and Sam takes that for the yes it most certainly is. She starts grinding back on Bucky’s thigh while her hands drag Steve down into a filthy kiss.

“Oh god, you’re so wet,” he hears Bucky groan and when Steve drags his mouth away from the familiar feel of Sam he is treated to the pleasure on her face while the fingers of Bucky’s right hand stroke and twist her nipples and his left sweeps up and down her thighs and ass under the dress.

“Don’t touch her yet, she loves the buildup,” Steve growls and then starts laving hot kisses on her neck while his right hand fondles Bucky’s ass, the firm muscle just begging for attention.

Steve can’t wait to devour that ass.

“Oh, god, oh, oh, oh fuck,” Sam stutters under her breath so Steve starts grinding his cock into her front, pushes her ass back onto Bucky’s groin, lets the heat between them build up and up until he’s sure they’re going to catch fire.

Steve shifts down the bed a little so he can suck at her nipples through the dress, soaks the fabric so she feels every shift and scratch, and then Bucky shoves his fingers into Steve’s mouth and he starts sucking those with fervor. God, Bucky’s fingers feel amazing, thick and long and the gun grip callouses are dragging over Steve’s tongue and pulling his jaw wider and _fuck_ there’s a hand on his cock now. Steve opens his eyes, sees Bucky sucking Sam’s tongue into his mouth, follows the line of their bodies down to see one of Sam’s hands behind her back, likely stroking Bucky’s cock as she’s rubbing herself back and forth on his thigh, and _oh sweet mary mother of jesus_ Bucky’s hand is trailing over Steve’s cock, tracing the shape of it, damn near tickling it, and Steve is going to lose his goddamn mind.

Steve’s eyes catch on Sam’s dress where it’s bunched between her legs and starting to pull wet and taught between the lips of her cunt, can imagine that the delicious scrape of wet fabric and hard muscle against her clit feels like heaven. Slowly, he trails his fingers up her thighs, feels the slightly raised lines of her tattoos contrasted to the smoothness of her skin, reaches that favored crease where her ass and thighs meet, and digs his fingers in. She gasps against Bucky’s mouth and Steve can hear him whispering filth while he directs both hands to her nipples.

“You want him to eat you out, sweetheart?” Steve glances up and sees her eyes squeeze shut while Bucky tongues at her neck just below her ear and his fingers continue to roll and tug her nipples. Bucky looks down, fucking winks at Steve and then he shifts out from behind her, and moves to cradle her head in his lap while he makes quick work of pulling her breasts out of her dress. Steve moves with her legs, thankful for the extra room to spread her open and he can smell her now, the damp musk of her arousal. They get her stretched out on the bed between them, Steve’s head cradled between her thighs and his hands wrapped around her pelvis so that her legs are thrown over his shoulders and her head is in Bucky’s lap, neck thrown back so she can mouth at the tent in his pants and her tits pushed up in offering.

Steve starts pushing her dress up more, exposing the trimmed curls of her pussy and the protruding bones of her pelvis to Bucky’s wandering eyes, feeling like he’s seeing her for the first time all over again. Once he reaches her breasts Bucky’s hands clasp his, fingers intertwining for a moment and Steve kneels up so they can share a teeth-clicking tongue-fucking kiss. He lets Bucky pull the dress the rest of the way off of her, goosebumps raising on her skin where the sweat is being immediately cooled by the fans and _oh_ that’s fascinating, watching her writhe at the warring sensations when Bucky bends down to pull a taut nipple into his mouth. Steve could get off just watching them, but then his eyes catch on the dusky rose of her inner pussy lips winking at him, slick with her arousal, the catch and release of her sweet fluttering center every time she twitches her hips.

Steve bends his head, presses loving kisses up her inner thighs and he hears her sounds get louder and yet also more muffled and he wants to look up and see her mouth hopefully around Bucky’s cock but he also wants to see if she tastes like pomegranates yet.

She doesn’t, still slightly bitter like coffee, but Steve’s dick is Pavlovian at this point, the second his tongue sweeps from her asshole to sucking on her clit he’s hard as a rock and can’t resist grinding down into the bed for a hint of relief.

“Fuck, shit, wait, wait!” Sam cries out, legs clamping around Steve’s head to still him and when he looks up Bucky is moving to her side so he can cup the side of her face and ask, “what is it, baby?”

“Bodily fluids. Me and Steve are clean, got tested right before you came,” her hips are still twitching inches away from Steve’s mouth, but he pulls his brain out of his dick enough to note that she says before you came instead of after Gabe left and his heart swells.

Because Sam hadn’t fought for Gabe to stay, hadn’t demanded an explanation though he gave her one anyway, had just accepted his decision and wished him the best, but Steve knew. He knew her heart was broken, a million pieces dropped on the floor like a teacup, and he knew he couldn’t do anything but bandage her hands as she picked up the pieces, gaze turned inward trying to figure out what happened. He still sees the vacancy in her eyes sometimes, when the light hits just right and he knows she’s seeing Gabe perched somewhere reading a book like a mirage, but he sees her spark returning too, slowly but surely being nurtured back to life.

“Got tested when I got my shots to come here. I’ll be right back,” and then Bucky is bouncing out of the bed and down the stairs before either of them can say anything. Sam is still very much naked and Steve knows his lips are glistening with her slick and his dick is still hard as hell and when he looks up she’s looking at him like he’s everything.

“I love you so much,” he shifts up her body, settles into the cradle of her strong thighs, and kisses her deep. She sobs a little into his mouth, but meets him lick for lick.

“You’re the absolute best thing…” she trails off in favor of arching closer. One of Steve’s hands comes up to cradle her breast and thumb at her nipple while he ruts against her clit, teasing circular motions to drive her crazy.

“You want him to come inside you too, love? I know how much you like it when it’s me filling you up, you think he’d be into it too?” Steve presses harder against her while her hands start inching his shorts down to cup his ass.

“Yes, please,” she responds and Steve can hear the strain in her voice, the effort she’s expending to hold herself back from throwing him down and riding him hard because she loves it when he gets _‘all toppy and hot’_. Steve knows that she wants to not be in control right now, that her brain will spin her right out of orbit if he lets her think too much.

Steve moans, “if you stay so polite I’m sure we could convince Bucky to indulge you, sweetheart. Wonder what his kinks are, hmm? He’s perfect for us, so I’m sure we could all find something to do together,” he tongues at her neck when he feels her hands wrap around his cock, hastily tugging it free of his pants.

Steve is about _this close_ to saying fuck it and drilling into her when Bucky returns, papers fluttering in his hands.

“If youse guys wanna wait that’s so cool…with…uh. Shit. Fuck, that’s hot, ohmygod,” Bucky’s standing on the loft stairs, head poking up through the floorboards, eyes glued to where Sam is slowly stroking Steve root to tip. His Brooklyn accent is stupidly charming and reminds Steve of evenings spent in the kitchen talking to his dad while his mom puttered about and hip-checked them at every opportunity.

He’s a little disturbed that that’s the image his brain supplies while his girlfriend’s got her hand on his dick, but hey, Steve can compartmentalize, he’s got _priorities_.

“Bring that here, darling, let me see you,” Sam croaks out and shit she already sounds like she’s been sucking dick when all they’ve done is dry hump and _god why isn’t she sucking Steve’s dick_. Bucky floats towards them, transfixed by all of the skin on display and Steve takes that opportunity to sit up and shove his tongue in Bucky’s mouth with his cock hanging out of his pants. Fuck and goddamn Bucky’s mouth is utter heaven and now Steve’s wondering why Bucky isn’t sucking his dick. His lips aren’t even that plump, but they’re soft and skillful when they part Steve’s and demand plunder. He wants to top the shit out of this man but he’s also really fucking certain that he wants to be taken apart by him, too.

“Steve, Steve, trade, you gotta read this too and then we have to discuss and then we can spend the rest of the day fucking, c’mon,” Sam jostles Steve out from between her legs and presses herself against Bucky’s side, one hand pressing the papers against Steve’s bare chest firmly.

Right. Focus. Read Bucky’s medical clearance of STI’s, provide his and Sam’s, and then fuck like it’s 1999. Focus, Rogers.

When Steve looks up from Bucky’s papers -clean of all VD’s, not a carrier for HPV- he’s got Sam wrapped around his hips, just holding her casually aloft while he grinds his dick between her legs and she kisses him like she’s dying. Steve’s brain takes a moment to reboot, eyes blinking like camera shutters as he mentally confirms that all three of them can have hot, gross, exhausting standing up sex together, and isn’t that an image. Sam’s hands are mapping out Bucky’s torso, scraping and tugging the dotted scars and dark hairs.

“Fuck, okay. Papers, where the fuck…” Steve stumbles out of bed and heads directly for her nightstand where they stored their papers together. He digs, a little frantically, through receipts and copies of receipts and inventory slips and a bunch of goddamn useless shit before he finally hits the bright red folder on the bottom, covered in goddamn glow in the dark stickers because Sam is a child. He all but rips it out of the drawer before flipping through its pages, searching for his prize.

“Fuck, finally, here, here, read this, fucking Christ,” Steve presses against Bucky’s back this time, grinds his own dick directly into the perfect curve of Bucky’s ass, and somehow stumble walks them back to the bed. Bucky drops Sam, unceremoniously but gently, and then whirls around to press their dicks together and tongue his way into Steve’s mouth.

“I trust you,” he whispers against Steve’s mouth.

“Read it anyway, so you can be as sure of us as we are of you,” Steve responds, happy and aching with love. Bucky leans back to read but Steve doesn’t move away, captivated by the fluttering of his eyelids and the little crease in his forehead as he scans and shuffles the pages, reading carefully even though he already knows the answer.

Steve feels Sam wrap her arms around his waist, presses her head low between his shoulder blades, breathes him in, and she waits. And Steve waits, hands on Bucky’s hips, letting reality sink in just a little, just enough to force oxygen into his lungs and throw his arousal on a back burner, simmering instead of boiling.

“Okay,” Bucky says a minute later, turns out of Steve’s grip enough to set the papers back on top of the folder he had hastily tossed on the bed and then move the folder to the nightstand. Bucky moves back into the circle of his arms, folds one hand along Steve’s jaw, lets the other rest on top of Sam’s where they sit just under his belly button.

“We’re all clean, consenting adults, and I am on birth control,” Sam starts, somehow always the more practical one despite how often Steve has had to pull her head out of the clouds.

“We’re gonna check-in with each other, make sure there’s no unintentional hurt, yeah?” she finishes with a squeeze to Steve’s middle.

“Yeah,” Bucky says softly, head tilted down where it’s resting on Steve’s shoulder, lips against the jutting bone of his clavicle.

“Yeah,” Steve says, pulling Bucky impossibly closer to his front and leaning further back into Sam.

“Penetration?” Sam nuzzles into Steve’s back and he can feel it again, that mounting heat and rising tension.

“I’m pretty exclusively a top, but I do switch now and then. I’m sure Steve could show me a good time,” Bucky presses a smacking kiss to Steve’s shoulder and then steps back. Before Steve can protest, Bucky is shucking his pants and yeah Steve can see why he’d semi-exclusively top. Who wouldn’t want to bottom for that.

_That_ being Bucky’s long, thick, _long_, beautiful cock. He must’ve only been half hard when he was tenting his pants because fuck.

Steve maybe whimpers, just a little bit in the back of his throat.

“We switch it up from time to time, but I prefer to bottom,” Sam moves over to Bucky, eyes on his cock, too, ass swaying in that way she does when she’s trying to make someone absolutely goddamn lose it.

It’s working.

“You a pillow princess, sweetheart?” Bucky rumbles at her, all charm and confidence, entire muscular body on display. He’s thick all over, course hair on his chest, and Steve thinks that some of that is definitely all of the work they’ve been doing in the back, preparing plots for the seasonal crops, but the rest of that is also definitely ex-military. Steve’s brain stupidly flashes to some goddamn awful porn he saw when he was in college of big hairy men fucking each other and his cock, the traitor, jumps. It’s not the first time he’s seen Bucky shirtless, but it is the first time he sees the plummy blush on his nipples, the first time he sees the bead of precum on the head of Bucky’s dick, the first time he sees all of him and Steve’s belly lurches with wordless want.

“If I am?” Sam murmurs back, voice dripping in honey, hands coming up to scratch through the hair on Bucky’s torso. Steve takes the opportunity to get rid of his own shorts and take a seat on the bed, hand on his dick, and he decides that watching those two tease and rile each other up his new favorite spectator sport.

“Then I’ll treat you like royalty, doll,” Bucky glances up quickly to meet Steve’s warm gaze, love and happiness shining from his storm cloud blue eyes, before he leans down to capture Sam’s mouth in a leisurely kiss. He watches them for a while, watches them explore each other, keeps the hand on his cock light and teasing while his other hand plays with his nipples. When they finally part from each other and turn to Steve he’s about ready to blow and he is absolutely going to die of sexual exhaustion today.

Bucky murmurs something into Sam’s ear, receives a nod, and then he smacks her on the ass as she shuffles over to Steve. He watches her eyes darken with arousal, knows the stinging bite and radiating warmth and possessive touch lights all of her fires and he nods approvingly at Bucky’s curious glance when she moans softly in the back of her throat.

“Good to know,” Bucky growls and then he, too, is stalking over to where Steve is reclining back on the bed. Sam pounces like a woman with a mission, kisses Steve like she’s going to wreck him and then she shoves his hand off his dick only to replace it with her mouth. His eyes roll back, pleasure and tight sucking heat enveloping him from head to toe, and then blinks open when he feels fingers on his mouth. Bucky swoops in almost immediately, shoving his tongue into Steve’s mouth and he can faintly taste Sam on his lips but Bucky mostly tastes like himself; sweat, coffee, mint, and smoke. The combination goes straight to his dick and Sam moans around his shaft where it pulses against her wicked fucking tongue. He glances down, sees the heavy bob of Bucky’s cock between his legs, and his mouth waters.

“You’re gonna suck my dick, lover, and then I’m going to fuck her while she blows you,” Bucky tongues inside Steve’s ear, lets him feel the intimate drag of his lips and teeth when he says the word fuck. Steve’s head goes fuzzy, abso-fucking-lutely delighted at the controlled demand of Bucky’s voice, happy to pass the reigns to this wonderful man who loves so widely.

“You like that, sugar?” Steve whimpers in response.

“Oh, you do like that. Noted. We’ll play with that more later,” Bucky promises against his lips. Steve goes boneless, lets Bucky tilt his head this way and that as their lips slip and slide against each other. Sam’s mouth around his cock is a smoldering fire, a long-lasting kind of pleasure as her tongue curls and her teeth gently scrape and her hand rolls his balls.

They shift around and check-in (Sam is overwhelmingly down for Bucky’s plans) until Steve is stretched out with Sam sixty-nine’d on his torso and Bucky’s thighs are bracketing Steve’s head.

“Ready, gorgeous?” Bucky thumbs at his nipple, twists it gently between his thumb and forefinger until it is a bright flaring peak on Steve’s chest. 

“Stick your dick in my mouth, Barnes,” Steve growls, eyes on his prize.

Priorities, people. Steve has _priorities_.

Bucky laughs and then lowers his body so that the tip of his dick is giving Steve a kiss and his balls are just lightly brushing the bridge of his nose. He stretches out his tongue, tastes the salty-bitterness that is precum, closes his eyes, and falls into the muscle-memory of having a dick in his mouth. He hears Bucky sigh like he just slipped into a steaming Turkish bath. Feels Sam’s head start to move on his own cock with renewed purpose, and then he feels her squeal and moan around him and he presumes that Bucky is finally playing with her. He can feel her dripping onto his chest, the sticky viscousness of her blazing arousal making itself known. 

Sam comes off of him to gasp and shudder and beg, “please, Bucky, baby, _pleasepleaseplease_ harder, more, c’mon-” and then cut off with a drawn out groan of frustration. Bucky must say something to her, something filthy and lovely that makes her take Steve as deep as she can at this angle, but he can’t hear it beyond muffled sounds as Bucky’s thighs squeeze tighter around him in encouragement. 

Minutes later, Sam convulses on his chest, all but going limp save for the tightening heat of her throat around his cockhead and the release of saliva drooling down his shaft. God he’s so fucking hard he could build a goddamn pavilion with his dick right now. Bucky pulls out of his throat and Steve watches, fascinated, as the shaft pulls out above him to reveal the thick plummy head of his cock, his spit coating it only about halfway down. 

Bucky’s fucking him for round two, no exceptions. 

They all shift around again, Bucky taking a moment to cradle Sam and Steve’s heads in succession and make sure they’re alright after their respective blowjobs, makes sure Sam is okay for more. It’s a heady feeling, being able to gently float on the tide of Bucky’s sure control with Sam instead of being the one exerting the control. Usually when she’s like this, soft and hyper-verbal as her mind spins a million miles a minute, Steve is watching her reactions, making sure she stays relaxed and fulfilled. But to cradle her in his arms during the reprieve and to simultaneously feel cradled in the whirlpool of Bucky’s dominance is another thing altogether. It’s so warm in Steve’s head, warm and quiet and humming with bliss. Bucky moves them so that Steve is leaning against the headboard and Sam is on her elbows and knees between his legs, staring up at him from beneath her eyelashes like she’s about to ride a particularly thrilling rollercoaster. 

“If you make him come before I make you come, I’ll turn your hide red, sweetheart,” Bucky trails his lips up the curve of her back, from tailbone to the back of her neck as he makes his promise. Steve watches her eyes flutter briefly into the back of her head as the thought hits her, and then they meet his with scorching promise and he knows, he _knows_, that he’s going to come in five minutes or less.

Sam starts working her mouth over his cock, maddening slide of her tongue on the vein under the head and sucking heat from the back of her throat. She stares at him, eyes wide and filling with tears and fluttering occasionally as Bucky toys with her some more. Steve sees the exact moment that Bucky starts pushing into her because Sam pulls off his cock to gasp and lean up, the arch of her back becoming more pronounced, and Steve can just see between her ass cheeks to where Bucky’s cock is steadily disappearing into her wet heat. In one long, slow slide, he’s buried to the hilt and Sam is gasping and whimpering above Steve’s angry dick.

“Get your goddamn head down,” Bucky growls, hands gripping Sam’s hips to keep her impaled and still until she follows the directive. 

He’s never seen someone swallow a cock that fast, is what Steve thinks right before his soul exits through the gift shop and he cries out, coming as soon as he hits the back of her throat and she swallows.

“Really wanted to see me spank her, huh, Stevie?” Bucky purrs. He’s grinding his hips into Sam, who’s head is buried in Steve’s hip, gasping and licking her lips and no doubt focusing all of her energy on gripping Bucky’s cock tighter with her inner muscles. He knows how maddening that is, has had years to build up a resistance to her squeezing his cock, but he’ll come like a fountain every time, and she’ll be -deservedly- smug for days.

Steve nods at Bucky, wants the opportunity to watch her face while Bucky spanks her, something that will no doubt be a new and fantastical experience. He never gets to see her face when he spanks her, always has to gauge her reaction by the way she wriggles and moans, but as soon as Bucky brings his hand down the first time in tandem with a deep thrust, Steve knows that it’s going to be a new favorite thing. Her face scrunches up with the pain, but she moans low and long in her throat and her hips snap upwards and back for more. 

“Can you come just on my dick, sugar?” Bucky directs at her before his eyes snap up to Steve’s, “tell me how she likes it,” he demands. 

“Deep,” Steve gasps, scooting out from under her, hands coming down to cradle her face so he can more intently watch her pupils blow and kiss her. He absolutely cannot wait until it’s his turn. 

“Deep and hard. If you keep spanking her or stick a finger in her ass she’ll come if you’re patient,” Steve hears her draw in a deep breath in preparation for the onslaught to come. 

“She likes feeling filled up, s’why she got the implant, so I could come in her,” Steve meets Bucky’s eyes, sees the mischievous glint shimmering there.

Steve watches, rapt, as Bucky starts fucking her hard, the slap of his thighs on the back of her legs echoing in the loft, the crack of his hand on her ass hitting like a drumbeat. Sam’s grunting, moaning, making keening noises high in her throat while Steve kisses her and whispers more delicious filth in her ears. His orgasm cools his fire a bit, lets him sit back and just enjoy watching them together, reminds him that they can try as many positions and permutations as they want in the future.

Sam comes with a gasp into Steve’s mouth and her face freezes and her hips move back to press Bucky as deep into her as possible and when Steve looks up he most definitely has a thumb in her ass but his other hand is wrapped around her waist. She’s whimpering into Steve’s neck and Bucky’s grinding into her, huffing under his breath as he feels her contract and flutter around him. Moments later, Sam takes in a deep breath as the aftershocks make their way through her and Bucky leans back and parts her cheeks with both of his hands, looking at where they join and Christ Steve wants to see that, the echoing twitch from his dick agreeing with the sentiment. 

“C’mere, love,” Bucky gestures to Steve and when he moves out from under her, Sam collapses face first into the bed, arms stretched in front of her and torso lowering into a more delightful arch.

“Lube?” he asks, and Steve nods fervently, moving off the bed to grab the little bottle from the dresser across the walkway. When he returns Bucky is back to fucking her, slow deep thrusts that grind his balls into her clit and she’s all but catatonic with her face to the side, staring into space while she moans breathlessly. Bucky pulls him in close for a messy kiss and the lube bottle drops near Sam’s hips while his hands wrap around Bucky’s neck, somehow feeling small and fragile in his grip.

Sam’s third orgasm surprises her. Bucky is still inside her, just absently grinding his dick and circling his hips every few moments while he kisses and teases Steve, who is now fully hard and arching into the hand on on his dick. Bucky comes with a grunt and a long groan and Steve licks into his slack mouth possessively, sipping the sighs from his lips and relishing every second. Bucky doesn’t pull out, just grinds deeper, and Sam moans low and filthy. When he does pull out Sam just curls forward so her chest is pressed between her knees and her ass is resting on her feet, giving both men the perfect fucking angle to watch Bucky’s come start to drip out of her. 

“New kink: confirmed,” Bucky mutters darkly, one hand rolling Steve’s balls and the other stripping the last vestiges of orgasm from his own cock.

“That’s what Steve said the first time, too,” Sam slurs. Her ass is a glowing a faint red and her pussy looks swollen and wet between her legs, but her face is blissful and content when she rolls over to curl up on her side near the headboard. 

“My turn,” Steve says, arousal starting to mount again, and he presses every inch of his front to Bucky’s as he takes his mouth in a kiss. Bucky presses him back into the bed, and Steve is all too happy to cradle a very masculine body between his legs for the first time in a very long time, the press of a heavy cock against his own and the flexing abdominals twitching under his fingertips. Bucky squeezes his ass as they kiss, strokes over the curve and muscle, forces Steve’s body to accommodate his wide hips as they roll their bodies together. By the time he reaches for the dropped lube Steve is glassy-eyed and flushed. Sam moves close enough to kiss Steve when Bucky leans back to drop his head between Steve’s thighs, pressing butterfly kisses to the sensitive skin as one of his hands reaches between his legs with the refreshingly cool lube to gently press at his hole. He doesn’t move to penetrate, just gently presses and prods and feels it twitch in invitation. Steve lets Sam kiss him stupid while Bucky slowly opens him up, one finger and then two, minutes later, swirling and pressing inside of him until he finally hits his prostate and Steve all but jackknifes off the bed at the electric sizzle that shoots from the base of his back to the top of his head. Bucky bites Steve’s inner thigh, a small tug of the skin there, and continues to press and massage that spot until Steve is begging for another finger, for more.

Bucky, beautiful man that he is, gives it to him immediately.

God, Steve has missed this full feeling, the anchor of Bucky’s fingers inside his body while his other hand rubs soothingly at his hip. Sam reaches a hand down to slowly stroke Steve’s cock, keeping him hard and on the precipice while she leans back to watch them love each other. 

“Ready?” Bucky asks, an eternity of moments later, three fingers pressed deep inside Steve, stroking along his inner walls while his other hand spreads lube on his own cock. Steve nods with a moan, eager to have his patience rewarded.

Bucky sits up and scoots in pull Steve’s lower half into his lap, forcing Steve’s back to arch and his legs to spread wider around his hips. Sam stops stroking his cock in favor of tugging at his nipples, sweat dripping off her skin, hair a beautiful mess. 

There is a brief moment of uncomfortable pressure as the head of Bucky’s dick starts to press against his hole, but it gives way to the smooth slick glide of ecstasy as Steve pushes his hips back, impatient for more. Bucky teases him with it, pressing in an inch or so at a time before pulling out, rinse, repeat. Steve can feel the gradual widening of Bucky’s cock as he presses closer and closer, the glancing scrape of the head over his prostate sending electric shocks up his spine. Sam scoots close enough to distract Steve with more kisses, but he has to pull away and gasp when Bucky bottoms out, the sharp bones of his hips punching into the meat of Steve’s ass. 

“God,” he chokes, feeling full and loved.

“Christ you’re tight. Open up for me baby,” Bucky soothes him, hands rubbing his hips and lips on his neck. Steve relaxes into the weight and pressure, focuses on the delightful pleasure of being split open instead of the sensitive ache of needing to come again.

Bucky fucks him slow, gentle, like he knows it’s been a while for Steve. He can hear Sam encouraging them with breathless whispers of comfort and love, telling them both how beautiful they are, how she’s going to pose them for a photoshoot one day. Steve is sure her face is something to behold, probably slack with erotic pleasure, maybe the same face she made when he caught her watching gay porn, but he’s too caught up in the look on Bucky’s face to tilt his head and look.

Bucky is looking at Steve like he is more than the suitcase of hurt he drags along with him, more than the grief that has only ever compounded over the years, more than the anxiety he has worked every day to soothe.

Bucky’s looking at him like he’s enough.

Steve cries out when his cockhead presses directly onto his prostate, a firm and steady pressure that pulls behind his belly button like exquisite, pleasurable torture. His own dick pulses and jumps on the next thrust, his balls feel full and heavy and god, his rim feels so sensitive Steve is positive he can feel the hairs at the base of Bucky’s cock scraping him there. Steve starts to move his hand toward his dick, eager to chase the pleasure to the end of the line and out the other side but Bucky pushes it away, wraps his own hand around Steve and murmurs something to Sam that he misses, lost in the dual sensations. Sam leans over him for kisses, one hand tugging at his nipples and the other hand cradling the side of his face. Steve is being assaulted on all sides, utterly consumed between the two of them, and before he knows it he's clenching down hard on Bucky’s cock and coming. Bucky does the same thing he did with Sam, pressing in as deep as possible and swiveling his hips to draw out the pleasure while his hand stripes the life out of Steve’s cock, milking him for all he’s worth.

Bucky comes a few short thrusts later, pressing deep and leaning down to press kisses to Steve and Sam alternately, the current of affection and love flowing from one to the other seamlessly.

Steve feels warm and also decadently dirty inside and thinks yeah, okay, I see why she likes this so much. 

When Bucky pulls out to collapse next to Steve he can feel the hot, slick glide of come on his rim, is positive they’re going to have to change the sheets, but that’s a problem for Later Steve to endure. Right Now Steve is enjoying the mindless luxury of basking in the afterglow of good sex, one of Bucky’s legs looped over his, one of Sam’s hands in his hair, and he is sure they must be touching each other, too. How could they not?

“You know those fade-to-black sex scenes that end with the guy smoking a cig with one arm behind his head?” Bucky murmurs, minutes later. 

Steve shifts his head to meet his half-lidded gaze, sees that Bucky is veritably sprawled on his back with one of Sam’s legs thrown over his shoulder and grinning like a fool. 

“I have a box of pre-rolls on the drafting table downstairs. I’m not getting up,” Sam makes a show of relaxing further into the nest of pillows she’s made for herself near the head of the bed, both fans pointing at her in supplication. 

“Any of them indica?” Bucky responds after a beat, and Steve realizes he’s seriously considering ruining their cuddle pile for weed. Sam hums back in the affirmative, still _no help whatsoever_ towards Steve’s plan to keep them both as close as he possibly can. 

Steve stretches one arm out to reach under the bed, feeling around for the box that he knows is absolutely there, hidden away. He pulls out the simple wooden box, smooth but for the top, stamped with a panther crouched on a branch, watching the viewer, daring them to open it. Steve presses the little hidden button on the bottom, and the seamless lid pops up a centimeter, just enough for him to slide it the rest of the way up and peer inside.

Four passports, nine-thousand American dollars in cash, a velvet bag that he knows is filled with 24 karat gold jewelry and gems, a box of matches, unopened, and a box of cigarettes, unopened. 

Sam was so serious when she placed all of their escape items into the little box, until she produced a box of cigarettes and told him that if it reached the point of them needing to leave then they’d need the nicotine for their nerves. They had laughed, and she had told him it likely wasn’t going to come to that, but it was always good to have contingencies for the contingencies, and they had moved on.

He casts those thoughts from his mind and grabs the cigarettes and matches with a mental reminder to replace them. Wordlessly, he tosses the items onto Bucky’s rising chest and closes the box, slipping it back under the bed. Sam catches his eye with a questioning quirk of her eyebrow but otherwise makes no comment.

“Wha-” Bucky looks down at the items and begins to chuckle, and then laugh, full-bodied and warm.

“Share?” Bucky asks and Steve crawls closer to plaster himself to his side, sated and happy. Sam grabs the ashtray from the side table and shifts closer. Within the span of minutes they are all laying on top of each other, sharing smoky kisses as the sweat cools.

* * *

Steve promises Bucky that the farm can survive a day without their intervention and then leaves them upstairs to make lunch. He hears the low murmur of their voices while he’s in the kitchen and thinks about domesticity. Steve used to itch to return to the states, occasionally fed up with the off-grid lifestyle and wanting for modern amenities. Sam never begrudged him for it, just accompanied him to the airport with a hug and a kiss and a promise to be there when he returned. He’d go back, visit his parents plot in upstate New York, spend a few weeks catching up with his college buddies, and then he’d oscillate back to itching for quieter days. The buzz of Brooklyn was always there to welcome him back with open arms, but Steve would always return to the farm after a month or so, fed up with the slow-rotting American dream, and Sam would pick him up from the airport and whisk him back to the jungle, his room always left as-is, his favorite treats already in the pantry, the ball always left in his court. He supposes they’ve always had a bit of an open relationship, though not always a healthy one. He’d come calling or she’d come calling, desperate to be reassured that no matter the fuck-up someone still loved them.

Steve plates up the rice and flatbread, the chicken curry and the fruit salad, sets it all up on a platter to carry upstairs. He’s greeted by Sam in his discarded t-shirt and Bucky in his shorts, lounging on the couch passing a pipe back and forth, their exposed skin shining in the mid-afternoon light. He drops the platter off on the coffee table and hops back downstairs for the pitcher of mango juice and the bottle of rum. When he returns they’ve made a space for him between them, Bucky’s bedroom eyes and Sam’s gap-tooth grin beckoning him forward. She already has a piece of flatbread bulging in her cheek and she laughs when Bucky exhales smoke into Steve’s mouth as they kiss.

“So, how should we do this?” Bucky asks maybe an hour later, after lunch has been consumed and enough of the rum has been imbibed to loosen their tongues. Steve shrugs: he’s good at theories, but putting them into actual practice, especially where people are concerned, is a tricky affair. 

“Well.” Sam starts but cuts herself off, a curious frown on her face. It’s her thinking face, the one that has occasionally led Steve into fights but more often than not has led them both down a path of adventure. Steve waits, tosses one of his legs over Bucky’s, burrows a little more firmly into his side so that they’re both more angled to look Sam in the face. She’s squished and folded herself into the corner where the arm and the back of the couch meet, a throw pillow on her lap to stabilize the rolling tray; her hands kept busy grinding and packing and de-seeding. Beautiful products of an ever busy mind.

“I was gonna say one day at a time, but that doesn’t seem very efficient,” she meets Steve’s eyes briefly before glancing away again. He is suddenly very aware of how tense he is, how tightly coiled his body has become as the weight of what they did and declared earlier starts to press in on him. He consciously relaxes, forces himself to melt into Bucky’s side. Undoes the knots in his belly and lets his spine become liquid, worms his other foot into the space between Sam’s thigh and the back of the couch. Thinks about the warming intimacy of casually touching another person. Femoral pulse against the ankle, laughing ribcage against the back, pulse of creation thrumming through their skin.

“How about,” Steve starts and feels himself stupefied too.

“Slowly, I think, since this is new territory for all of us,” he says, finally. More sure as his brain spins through endless possibilities.

“You two should keep your bedrooms downstairs. Spaces that are just yours. If you two want to be together without me, can use one of your rooms if you want, but if you want them to solely be yours then you can come up here? Just tell me to get lost. I doubt both of you would fit on a queen together anyway,” spills from Sam’s lips. Steve spares a moment to think of the ridiculousness of kicking Sam out of her own room. 

“Or,” Bucky interjects, “we could just use my room? I have a big family, privacy isn’t really a thing.” 

Sam frowns again, contemplative.

“If we want to be alone, we can figure it out,” Steve shrugs, all false bravado and ludicrous courage. “Or we’ll fuck in the back instead of working.”

That makes them laugh. Bucky’s chest shakes and vibrates through Steve’s back, curls around his ribs, knocks his heart back into orbit. Sam puts down the joint she was rolling, giggles like she did before she knew the intimacy of heartbreak, takes another hit from the pipe resting between Steve’s legs, lets her eyes twinkle and her shoulders relax from around her ears.

* * *

The days and weeks start to blur together again, the ease of routine finding the three of them in the way of forming galaxies: compensating for new cosmic material on the fly. 

Iman sees the three of them piled together on the couch, hand-feeding each other dried fruit and generally being indecent, so he drops off a five-person hammock the next day. Like it’s easy, a period instead of a list of question marks. 

Steve spends several scattered mornings blowing Bucky against various trees in the back of the orchard, tucked between buttress roots, a calloused hand stroking sweet and gentle across his temple, Bucky’s breathless hums of pleasure carried away with the breeze. Bucky repays by boxing him in against those same trees, claiming all of Steve’s secret softness with his hands, milk and honey kisses pouring down his throat, pooling in his collarbone. He spends several more mornings wrapped in Sam’s embrace, everything slow and sticky and sweet. The kind of lovemaking that can only happen in the quiet hush between the twinkle of bright stars. Moonlight and interludes of painful intimacy. Candle wax melting onto the end table. Laconic, stretched time in the pre-dawn glow of periwinkle clouds. 

* * *

When Bucky’s six month _visa-versary_ hits, they stay in. Spend the day upstairs. Coast on the cool breezes of early dry season. Smoke enough kush to hotbox the entire loft in an hour. Eat their way through coolers filled with treats. Touch each other, constantly. Enjoy the slow unraveling of lazy lovers on a stop-motion day. Tug on trains of wishful thinking without intent. Kiss and touch each other, with intent. Play naked in the pool while the sun sets, trace the sherbet skin shadows with eyes and mouths and hands. Stare at the spiraling cosmos, hand-in-hand-in-hand until the water looks of oil. 

Come back inside. Wash each other with sweet smelling soaps, get distracted kissing under the warm spray. Skip the towels altogether, sprawl naked in a damp heap across the couch for the second time today. Turn off all the lights, except the warm paper lamps in the corners. Light some candles, dig out a bottle of local hooch because none of you can remember the last time you felt so liquid and content and the melancholia of it is too much to bear. Make every sip a toast and every toast a reason for kissing. Conjure endless excuses to kiss.

They end up in bed, of course. Sam sits astride Steve’s lap, the searing heat of her in direct contrast with the cool air from the fans. Bucky is holding himself up near Steve’s head, the base of his cock just visible at the edge of Steve’s periphery. They’re making out above him, breathing into each other’s mouths, cheeks rolling together like large affectionate cats. Steve is flying high in the friendly sky, enamored with the silky texture of Sam’s skin against his fingertips. Content to wait until his lovers are ready to use him for their pleasure. Shivers at the future possibilities.

Steve watches a singular thread of saliva connect Sam and Bucky’s lips when they finally part. He wants to sip wine from their lips. Bucky is flushed and breathing deep, eyelids heavy with cannabis and alcohol and arousal, making his usual seductive gaze sloe eyed and sleepy. Sam is in the same boat, hairline beaded with sweat, nipples tight and dusky, hips gliding in light damp circles against Steve’s groin. The wet of her pussy cools instantly on his skin as she moves away, tightens the skin between his belly button and dick deliciously, tickles gasping breaths from the seat of his pleasure. Bucky looks down at him, angles his head in such a way that the ambient light of the upper loft throws him into hazy shadow, makes him look like a sleepy wolf with secrets. Steve wants to capture him in a million mediums, wants to lick across Bucky’s skin and nibble on the taut muscles in his back and shoulders. Wants, desperately, to keep him. 

Bucky leans down to kiss him then and Steve’s mind floods with more endorphins to tango with the cannabinoids and the rum. Bucky kisses like a chopped and screwed song when he’s high: lazy tongue in a slow grind along the inside of Steve’s mouth, plump bitten lips dragging along sensitive skin. His whole being moves slowly, like he’s got all the time in the world to sink into the waves of pleasure, like he’d be content to spend the rest of his life coming up with new slow ways to prolong the pleasure. Bucky hardly breaks the kiss to breathe, keeps close and shares the air, presses gasping kisses against Steve’s cheek. Cradles his head like he’s precious, like he’s everything.

Sam turned on music at some point during their kiss, all slow grind baselines and silky crooning voices. Steve looks at Bucky, sees the crystals of clarity reflected in his eyes, the permission and joy, and lets himself sink fully into the tide of pleasure, safe in Bucky’s hands.

“Gorgeous, sweetheart.” Bucky kisses him again, harder and with more tongue, but breaks away after a few seconds to say something quiet to Sam. Too quiet for Steve to hear. So he focuses on the hand Bucky has on his neck. It’s wrapped lightly, just conforming to the shape, the pressure only heavy enough to not tickle. Bucky’s middle finger is dipped into Steve’s clavicle, stroking and occasionally tapping the bones in conjunction with his thumb resting on the side of Steve’s neck, sweeping in long steady arcs from the bottom of Steve’s ear to the hinge of his jaw.

Steve feels heavy-limbed and warm. Decadent. Like he is sinking backwards through clouds.

Bucky nudges the head of his cock against Steve’s mouth gently, sticky precome painting his lips. Steve opens and Bucky slips in with a quiet groan. He strokes gently with his tongue, lapping all around the crown and arching his head back to suck Bucky further back into his throat. It is a languid blowjob, messy with saliva and good intentions, the slow rock of Bucky’s hips lulling Steve into comfort. He’s almost convinced he’s gonna fall asleep on Bucky’s dick when Sam takes him to the hilt in one go. Christ, she’s so wet, Steve is drowning, absolutely drowning between the folds of her pussy and the pressure of Bucky in his throat. They're both riding him slow and hard, both at least as faded as he is, unselfconsciously vocal in a lovely and amorphous way. Communicating through groans and gasps and languid touches in the way of rutting beasts. Sam’s hands are rubbing back and forth over Steve’s chest, toying with his nipples to the point of aching while her hips rock in circles over his dick. Bucky thighs are rhythmically squeezing around his skull with every pulsing grind. And Steve is lost in the eddies of sensation. He’s warm everywhere, feeling somehow both _untethered from_ and _more present in_ his body than ever. Maybe it’s because he is both giving and receiving the ride of his life. Steve’s spine starts to tingle, a shot of electricity travels from his tailbone through his bellybutton, jerks his hips firmly upward into Sam, wrenches a choked gasp from the back of his throat. The more he sinks the closer he gets, the further down they press him the better it feels. He wonders where Bucky’s hands are and then lets the thought go almost immediately, the delicious pleasure in his body pulling him firmly back into the tide of the most erotic lovemaking of Steve’s life. 

He thinks he could get used to this. The thought flutters away too quickly for Steve to grasp, but it casts morose shadows on the walls of his mind; echoes of memories summoned- 

Bucky is fucking his face. At some point Steve had completely relaxed his throat and let his jaw hang open and Bucky had taken it as invitation to start moving his hips more sharply. Deeper. Chasing his own orgasm. Steve’s eyes are closed. He opens them, blinks against the sweat and tears, catches glimpses of the rapture on Bucky’s face on the backstrokes. He looks obscene. He’s staring down at Steve’s mouth, eyes black in the candlelight, top teeth sunk into his kiss-red bottom lip, right hand flattened under his belly button, fingers barely brushing the base of his cock. His hair is sweat-slick and pushed back, save for Steve’s favorite rogue bangs which are hanging down into Bucky’s face, dripping onto his chest.

Speaking of his chest. Steve’s eyes catch and stay on his nipples, plummy and tight and if his mouth wasn’t already occupied he’d be suckling on them until someone came. Bucky’s pecs have gotten more defined in the six-months he’s been doing manual labor several hours a day. His whole body has gotten sharper, less bulky and more streamlined with the shifted diet. Bucky lifts the hand not pressed to the base of his cock to push sweat and hair back off his face and Steve’s eyes immediately lock on the flex of his triceps and biceps. God, even Bucky’s armpits are sexy.

“Fuck.” Bucky bites out, eyes meeting Steve’s as he pulls almost all the way out, only the head between Steve’s lips. He licks the steady stream of precome from the slit, hypnotized. He can feel Sam still riding him, one hand rolling his balls. Did she turn around? Steve can’t feel anything besides his cock and his mouth, every iota of his existence focused on the places where they touch. She’s soaked inside, her walls contracting spasmodically around him as she arcs closer and closer to completion. She’s probing at his perineum now, sitting perfectly still, impaled on his cock; Steve can feel the tips of her fingers briefly alighting on his balls and he knows, intrinsically, that she’s rubbing furiously at her clit. 

The mental image combined with the weight of Bucky’s appraisal sends Steve rocketing towards his orgasm before the next breath. All of time flows backwards in the millisecond before it crashes into him, the gasp before the moan, the spark before the flame. And then it does crash into him, ignites behind his bellybutton and radiates outwards in a flood of euphoria. He moans, high-pitched and tearful, around the head of Bucky’s cock, and his eyes roll backwards as he feels Sam start to come around him, her inner walls squeezing agonizingly tight and then fluttering like a hummingbirds wings. One of her hands is still rubbing Steve’s prostate from the outside, milking him for all he’s worth. A scream perches in his throat. Bucky’s fist starts bumping his nose as he tugs at his cock. Steve tries to focus on sucking him dry, but his orgasm is still reverberating around his body, his brain is melting, he doesn’t even know if he’s breathing anymore. 

A scant few moments after Steve and Sam, Bucky comes with a shout, shoves his dick down Steve’s throat and spills and spills and spills into his body. Somehow, it makes Steve’s orgasm better. A final wave crests, a gentle aftershock simmering in his groin as he drifts on the pleasure. 

They breathe together for a while, content to remain attached to each other. The head of Bucky’s cock kisses Steve’s lips as the rest of him goes soft. Sam is laying on top of Steve’s legs, her hips twitching with her own aftershocks. His entire groin is wet with their combined juices and Steve’s cock gives a little twitch when he realizes that she sprayed enough to get a few drops near his nipples. A part of him dimly wishes Bucky had pulled out and come all over him too but it is summarily dismissed when Bucky pulls out and leans down to kiss himself from Steve’s lips. Steve moans into it, is so distracted he doesn’t realize Sam has pulled off of him until he feels the warm damp cloth rub tenderly across his chest.

Bucky’s eyes are a warm aquamarine this close, reflecting golden candlelight and a love so tender it steals Steve’s breath. When Bucky pulls away, Sam takes his place, tongue gentle as it strokes against Steve’s. 

They kiss for a formless amount of time, Steve’s head on a near constant swivel as he sips salvation from his lovers’ lips. He doesn’t fully return before he falls asleep, but he’s just lucid enough to feel Sam’s back pressed against his side. Enough to feel Bucky’s big warm hands pull him onto his side so Steve can nuzzle into his armpit while he strokes Steve’s back. He hears a snort of laughter above him, feels Bucky’s hips wiggle a little bit, registers Sam’s foot pressed to the back of his calf and the weight of one of the light sheets pulled halfway up his thighs.

Bucky’s hand is still moving when Steve drops off.

* * *

It is only three days later that Steve steps upstairs into the mezzanine and finds Bucky frozen on the couch, face set in a scowl made of stone.

He’s staring at the hookah like it might have answers. Sam is upstairs with her phone pressed to her ear, right hand wrapped tightly around the railing, staring straight through Steve.

He freezes just inside the threshold and waits, eyes darting back and forth, adrenaline starting to eek into his bloodstream.

“What.” Sam finally says to the person on the other line. Her voice is flat and cold and Steve can almost hear her heart shattering. Bucky meets Steve’s gaze as the silence resumes and there is brittle pain there, too. He is afraid, Steve realizes.

He’s moving before he thinks, crouching in front of Bucky and laying his hands on his knees. Bucky all but collapses as soon as the connection is made, forehead coming to thunk gently against Steve’s.

“It’ll be fine,” Steve says, because he has no idea what’s going on but it doesn’t matter. How could it, when Bucky looks so lost and worried and Sam’s still as a statue. Bucky doesn’t respond so Steve presses a gentle kiss to his unmoving lips and repeats himself. 

“You don’t get to do this.” Sam croaks a few moments later. She sounds like she just chain smoked four packs of cigarettes in the last two hours. Steve hears her sigh quietly and then the creak of her mattress as she settles on it. 

“It’s Gabriel,” Bucky whispers eventually. Steve feels himself freeze instinctively, landmine detected. His mind spins through all the reasons why Sam would be in a tense conversation with goddamn Gabriel motherfucking Jones on a random Tuesday in December. 

Steve whispers back, “shit.” 

Sam says: 

“Not anymore.”

And, “That’s none of your goddamn business.” 

And, “That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.” 

And, “You know the answer to that.” 

And finally, “Fine. Email it.” 

Steve hears the muted thump of her phone landing on her bed, hears the creak of her getting up and walking down the loft stairs. Steve stands up, squeezes Bucky’s knee comfortingly, and braces himself. Sam won’t meet either of their gazes when she reaches the bottom. She makes a beeline directly for the stash of liquor hidden in one of the cubbies under her drafting desk. Steve watches her rifle through cabinet for a few seconds, hears the telltale clink of jostled bottles. She finally pulls one out, an unlabeled green bottle that speckled with old paint. She doesn’t grab a glass. 

No one speaks. Steve and Bucky watch her slump on the stool and take a long sip, grimacing afterwards. 

“Gabriel and Josephine are coming to interview me in a month.” Sam says, emotionless, eyes faraway, and then she takes a few more gulps of whatever deadly jungle hooch has been fermenting in that bottle. 

The silence echoes for a long time after that. 


	3. Part III: Alpha Centauri A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so freaking sorry it's been so long! Right after I uploaded the last chapter, a whole-ass fucking plague swept through the globe like HPV in a college dorm? Like, y'all. What the fuck. Anyway, as I live in a very removed and rural place I've been staying far the fuck away from people for the last year, only occasionally leaving the house to buy snacks or download christmas trap (I recommend it for late night fever writing). I honestly do not know how happy I am or want to be with this chapter, but I can't stand to look at it on my desktop anymore so I've decided to let y'all decide. Please give me your genuine feedback and reactions and criticisms, I can handle it. Just don't be nasty for the sake of it, I understand my writing style isn't for everyone, but that's no reason to be rude.  
Thanks to the Avatar: The Last Airbender renaissance I've fallen in love with Zuko all over again, so there will probably be a Zukka fic in the works (which is to say, I've already started writing it and it's gonna be so goddamn tender I wanna scream thinking about all the fluffy mush I'm gonna write).  
But fret not! If you're only here for my contributions to the Stucky fandom, you're in luck! Because I will never get over them and I will. Go. Down. With. This. Ship. Expect quarantine and apocalypse fics, because we all gotta cope feel me?  
I've missed interacting with y'all, tell me a weird/funny/ridiculous pandemic story and we can all cope with the End Times together.  
Anyway. This is it. The End. Thanks for sticking with me, thanks for bookmarking and commenting and giving me kudos. You're all my boo things.

People like to ask Sam questions. 

When she was a child her mother had a mental break: shook the walls of their apartment with her curses, laid homesick grief at her husband's feet, waved around the knife that she had fifteen minutes prior been using to prepare lunch. The brightness of the day streaming through their windows, the sounds of muffled chatter and dog barks heard through their walls, the regular comings and goings of the city on a perfectly sunny spring day, so strange and unworldly in the wake of the tragedy unfolding behind closed doors. Sam had stood at the mouth of the hallway leading to the bedrooms and watched, confused and fascinated and far too young. 

Until her mother noticed her and the knife hand swiveled. 

_ “Do you want to die?” _ is the first question Sam remembers being asked directly. She hadn’t answered, struck dumb by the perfectly-enunciated English coming from her African mother’s immigrant mouth. But the question had stuck with her through the years, expressing itself in the form of doubts and arguments and resentful silences. And Sam had started noticing more and more the questions people asked her. And she realized, too early and too late, that most of the time people asked questions with an answer already in mind; that they weren’t asking to understand _ her _. 

So when Bucky Barnes asks her, “_ What does it mean to kiss you,” _ on a cool foggy morning, with only a desire to _ understand _ in his gaze, she experiences the half-remembered-dream sensation of falling a little bit in love. It’s the way she felt when Steve, fourteen and lanky and still growing into his nose, showed up at her apartment the first day of summer break with a bag of snacks and the latest Grand Theft Auto in his backpack, insisting that if he didn’t pull her into it she’d never socialize. 

He was right, and it was the first of many summers they spent together. 

She’s still riding the punch-drunk high of their budding romance when Gabriel Jones calls her with questions of his own. 

_ “You sound good, how are you doing?” _he says, like last year didn’t happen. 

“_ I know I have no right, but…can I cash in one of my favors?” _he asks, faux humility dripping from his silver tongue. 

_ “How’s Steve doing?” _he inquires, like he didn’t break a piece of Steve’s heart, too. 

_ “I know we might never be friends again, but can we be civil, at least?” _he sighs, like Sam is the one who burned that bridge. 

These are some of the questions he asks, the answers he wants thinly veiled beneath gossamer words and liquid charm. He says other things, too; what he's been doing lately, the people he’s met, the places he’s visited. Tries to explain himself, explain the situation he’s created. The mess he’s made. 

It doesn’t matter what Sam said, how she responded to his questions. She’d still end up here: veins full to bursting with ice, lungs and limbs weighed down by grief, slumped at her drawing table with a bottle of booze, watching the first great love of her life oscillate between heartbreak and hostility. 

“Okay,” Steve says. 

“Okay,” he repeats, unconvincingly. 

“What _ exactly _did he say?” Bucky gets up from the couch, walks towards Sam, eyes on the bottle clutched like a lifeline in her hand. She can hardly look him in the eye, shy and nervous for the fallout. Bucky touches the back of her empty hand gently, runs his thumb back and forth across her veins and she fervently hopes that he does not notice her flinch. 

“Sam.” 

Her name is a lyric in Bucky’s mouth, a tender melody for lovers. She looks up, forces herself to meet his eyes, and sees the worry he doesn’t try to hide, the questions he doesn’t want to ask, that he might be forced to ask. He leans down and cups the side of her neck and Sam tilts her head instinctively, leaning into that warm palm, eyelids drooping, shoulders easing. She’s so grateful that he’s still touching her she could cry. 

“He couldn’t keep his mouth shut,” Sam sighs, suddenly bone tired and ravenous with the desire to curl up in Bucky’s big lap and disappear. She keeps her face straight when he moves away to lean against one of the front-facing windows halfway between her and Steve. Her skin feels cold, bereft. 

“He and his partner, Josephine, want to interview me. In about a month he said. So it can be done in time for their first spring issue.” Sam can feel Steve’s eyes on her, practically boring into the side of her face, but she keeps her own gaze directed at the bottle in her grasp. 

Bucky starts, “Partner as in-”

“Yeah, she’s the one. His One. She’s the journalist; he’s the photographer. They’re an efficient team.” Sam laughs and it sounds charred. She watches Bucky’s torso collapse with his exhale and then lets her gaze drift away as she rotates on her stool to look out the back windows. Silence descends, and then lingers, a cold echo in a bright place. 

* * *

Sam explains the full story when Iman stomps through the house shouting about the three large emails that just startled him out of a delicious mid-morning nap. 

Gabriel had talked about his experience, about whatever enlightenment he gleaned between the changing seasons of the jungle and Sam’s thighs, to apparently anyone who would listen. Told too many stories at too many kickbacks, exaggerated too much around the proverbial office water cooler, until the myth of Samadhi Wilson reached the ears of Chester Phillips, Editor-in-Chief of the French lifestyle magazine, _ L’Oubliette _. Gabriel had explained the knot he had tied himself in, the presumption of familiarity that led Phillips to assign him the task of securing an interview for a cover story slated for their spring issue. 

Gabriel framed it as a win-win. Sam gets the free press; Gabriel gets the bump for his career. 

Sam heard the truth: Gabriel fucked up and now Sam had the opportunity to either fuck him over _ worse _or help them both out significantly. 

The bruised and jagged edges of her heart protest viciously, _ too soon. _

The men Sam has chosen for her life sit still when she falls silent. Iman is considering her shrewdly, dark eyes narrowed, laptop open but untouched on the desk in front of him. Steve and Bucky sit on opposite ends of the couch, unblinking and blank-faced. 

“You said yes?” Iman leans back in his chair, not an ounce of judgment in his voice. Sam appreciates the effort, for all that it echoes hollowly. 

“I said ‘send the email’.”

“You want to say yes.”

“It would be good for business,” Sam replies and she can hear the undercurrent of grief. Iman dips his head in acknowledgement, but his eyes still pierce right through her for long moments. 

“One month. I’ll start hashing out the details, we’ll discuss later.” Iman closes the laptop and stands. Tugs affectionately on a flyaway strand of Sam’s hair as he disappears down the stairs. Sam hears him clanging in the kitchen, the sounds of lunch being thrown together, the distant soft clicking of laptop keys as he starts reading the emails. She loves Iman fiercely then, hopes that he chooses to put up with her for the rest of his life. 

“Why would you say yes to this? To _ him?” _ Steve bursts out after the _ bang! _ of the backdoor closing echoes up the stairwell. Sam stands, moves to the window nearest her piano and watches Iman’s retreating back as he carries the laptop and his food toward the patio set under the copse of big fruit trees behind the house. 

“I want to stop grieving. I want to forgive.” Sam crosses her arms and slumps onto the piano bench.

“I want to be better than my desire to hurt him back,” she whispers. The couch sighs as someone gets up, and suddenly there are big, beautiful, calloused hands cradling her face like she’s all they’ve ever wanted to touch. She leans heavily into the warmth, ever greedy for contact. 

“Okay. What do you need?” Bucky presses a kiss to the crown of her head and then squats down to look up at her. Sam leans further down toward him, wants to fold herself into his embrace and devise endless ways to keep him. But. 

She looks to Steve, stock-still and staring. She pleads with her eyes, wanting to know if he still wants to read her; if he’s still willing to be read by her. His face softens minutely, his jaw unclenches and Sam watches his shoulders shrug with his exhale.

“Stay?” Sam begs. 

Bucky kisses her, hard and demanding, says _ yes, of course I will, how could you ever doubt? _ with his lips and his questing tongue. The hand cradling her face moves to grip her skull, hold her still while he convinces her. When they part Steve is there to take over, to pull her up and hold her tip-to-toe against his large body. Sam hides her face in his neck, breathes in his smell of sweat and soap, tells him in all the ways that matter that it’s him; that choosing _ him _ is the first and easiest thing she does all day. 

Sam kisses him, offers herself as sacrifice, yields completely to him in the way she has never been able to for anyone else. Steve is the only person who knows all of her secrets, all of the dark, dirty, rotten, broken and bleeding parts of her. She can feel it in his kiss, the way he claims every part of her, binds them closer together, refuses to let her run away the way she has run away from almost everything else in her life. He kisses her messy and filthy and domineering, her gentle giant peeled back to showcase the snarling beast beneath his All-American grin. 

“Alright, baby. Alright,” he pulls back and shushes her, lips to her forehead, soothing hand rubbing up and down her back. She falls entirely into his arms, feels his girth swallow her whole, and then she feels Bucky at her back helping cocoon her in, and she sighs, blissful. 

* * *

Steve and Bucky are both asleep, curled together like punctuation in her new bed. They’ve both got clothes laid out on the ottoman. There are empty wine glasses on the coffee table next to the hookah downstairs. 

The three of them are traveling tomorrow, the start of a four day weekend in the city. Gabriel and Josephine will arrive in the evening, just in time for them to all get dinner together and have introductions before the interview the following day. 

Sam is wide awake, almost two full hours before the alarm is supposed to go off, sitting at her vanity, staring into space. She’s contemplating refilling the hookah bowl, considering the pros and cons of having a stiff drink at 3am. 

The month has all at once been far too long and painfully short. She doesn’t know where the time has gone. 

(That’s a lie, she knows where it’s all gone. She’s been scheduling tattoos back to back, been making wine almost nonstop, been in more contact with her editor the past few weeks than she has in the past year, been avoiding leading questions from her parents at all costs). 

Steve shifts a bit, pushing the light sheet further down the bed with his toes. Bucky grumbles deep in his chest and rolls over, one arm dangling towards the floor, the curve of his backside on full display. Sam wants to kiss him awake, trace every dip and curve of his spine with her lips, wants to have a proprietary relationship with his body. 

“Come ‘ta bed,” Bucky growls. He sounds like everything she has ever wanted to wake up to. 

“Can’t sleep,” she whispers back, the time of night more than her sleeping lover keeping her voice low. Steve could sleep through a typhoon, but 3am always feels fragile, somehow. 

“C’mere anyways,” he replies. He is already a master at moving Steve’s long limbs out of the way without disturbing him, and Sam thrills at the flash of kiss-bitten skin she’s treated to. Bucky scoots so that there is a space between them just big enough for her to slither into. 

Bucky is wide awake and reaching for her by the time she has moved into place. She presses her butt to Steve’s, curls a foot around his ankle, feels his warmth eradicate the icicles formed in her veins. 

“What are you worried about?” Bucky curls downward so that their foreheads are almost touching and the electric blue of his eyes consumes her. 

“I know the itinerary, when we’ll get there, which hotel we’re staying at, which restaurant we’ll go to, and almost every moment between now and when we come back. But I don’t know how he’ll look at me, how she’ll look at me, I don’t know how Steve will react. I don’t know how I’ll react or feel. I can control the external environment, but otherwise I’m flying blind.” She curls further into him. There are a lot of fears and frustrations under her skin, circling like birds of prey in her mind. 

“Would you like to know a secret?” Bucky tugs her closer until they’re pressed together tip to toe, both of his arms wrapped around her. She used to dream of being held like this, like she was precious and breakable and loved beyond the lonely grief that made her tongue sharp and her gaze cold_ . _ Sam wants to go back, visit her younger self in those darkest empty days and whisper, _ one day you will be loved like poetry. _

She nods. 

“I met a ghost when I was 15, in an abandoned field in Indiana when I was visiting family for Thanksgiving. She called me a pretty twink and then demanded I leave,” he stares at her, electric eyes twinkling like starlight in the dark. 

To kiss him is to conjure lightning in a bottle. Electric magic; once in a millennia. She laughs into his lips, more comfort than carnality, the pressure of his mouth and body against and around hers settling something primal and terrible inside. 

“Were you a pretty twink?” she murmurs when he releases her lips. 

“Excuse you, I’m still a pretty twink,” his grin sparkles at her and suddenly she is exhausted, a little rueful that she’ll only get two hours max of sleep, but comfortable and content all the same. 

* * *

Zuko is more than happy to drive them, filling the anxious silence with the latest and greatest of his ever-expanding family’s gossip. Steve and Bucky each have their own headphones in, studiously looking at their phones, but their hands are touching in the gap between their thighs and they’ll grin at her if she catches their eyes in a mirror. 

The drive is long, with various pit stops for gas and bathroom breaks along the way, but Bucky’s open curiosity and Steve’s guileless charm makes every stop enjoyable as children swarm the obvious foreigners. Sam tolerates the side-eye glances and under-breath huffs of distrust and focuses instead on playing translator for her sweethearts and sassing Zuko. Steve ropes Bucky into a game of football with a group of teens and she watches them run and tease while their lunch is made. 

<<Will it be a traditional or American wedding?>> Zuko has a sly grin on his face. 

<<A surprise, of course,>> she teases back lightly, eyes roving over the view: a village carved into the body of a mountain and towering, ancient trees that laugh in the breeze and a river that cuts through the landscape.

<<Poor, lucky, bastards,>> he rumbles, deep in his chest, and then he steps away to have a cigarette and answer his phone. Sam sighs and silently agrees. All told, she hasn’t given much thought to the future. She’s spent so much time running from her past that the only future she’s concerned herself with is the _ immediate _ future. To think in terms of _ years _feels formless and overbearingly large. 

Steve is always an emotionally sure thing, but he’s more flighty than Sam in tangible ways. He might leave with Bucky. He might decide to let Bucky leave, vague promises of visiting each other spilling bittersweetly at their feet as they wave goodbye in the airport. And Sam will have to choke down her own heartbreak and help Steve pack his bags, because her and Steve chose to be soulmates, but him and Bucky were _ made _for each other. 

But she wants Steve and Bucky when those years rear their massive heads. When the dust of this upcoming confrontation settles and their lives return to normal, when Bucky’s two contracted years are up, she wants them to _ choose _to stay. 

Selfishly, she wants them to choose her. 

* * *

T’Chakalo is as mysterious and magical as ever, and the drive from the outer limits into the city-center is filled with anxious but happy chatter. Bucky’s questions wash over the car like a spring breeze, cool and lovely and welcome in the anticipation of impending disaster. Steve is sprawled carelessly, like a sleeping cat, or one of Botticelli’s women, in the backseat, feet tapping clumsily to the music, head in Bucky’s lap, face upturned into the gold pouring from the opened sunroof. Bucky is happy to be used as a pillow, almost the entirety of the ride had passed with his face hanging out the window, but she catches a glimpse of one of his hands tenderly cradling the side of Steve’s face. Sam studiously ignores the familiar ache of lonely wanting that swoops through her chest. What she wants is available whenever she expresses desire, but still, her body is more familiar with being the odd man out. 

The shining vibranium of T’Chakalo proper, the true Palace City Center, rises like the mast of a great ship, one whose vastness is incomprehensible up close. See the tail, but not the whale. 

Their hotel is on one of the knife edge streets between the foreign district and the rest of the city, balcony views of the river and the palace on one side, the sprawl of modernity on the other. Sam waves goodbye to Zuko and makes no protest when Bucky and Steve each shoulder one of her bags in addition to their own. She checks in on autopilot, makes the appropriate noises and gestures when the concierge raises a quizzical eyebrow to the company she keeps, the suite she booked with the single massive bed, and accepts the matte black keycard with as much grace as she can force between clenched-smiling teeth. Between one blink and another she is standing inside the doorway to their room watching Bucky open the french doors to their balcony and Steve fusses over whether or not to unpack their luggage into the armoire. 

“We can extend our stay, take a little vacation after the fact,” slips out of Sam’s mouth with less effort than it takes for her to roll her eyes. Bucky absolutely vibrates with giddy joy, making cooing noises at the tops of flowering trees in a neighboring courtyard and Steve sets to unpacking all three of them simultaneously. She stands there, a little dazed and separated from her body, and watches them slough off the weariness of long travel. Steve catches her eye, and whatever he sees there makes him stop and calmly collect her from the now closed doorway. Did she close it? Did he? She’s deposited in a lounge chair, bathed in late afternoon sunlight, and she’s suddenly holding a bottle of water. It’s half empty. When did she…? 

“Ow! What the fuck?” she rubs at her arm to soothe the sting of the pinch. 

“Back with us now?” Bucky is half naked and crouched in front of her. She leers appreciatively at the taut purse of his plummy nipples and the layer of affectionate fat she single-mindedly fed back onto his body. Steve snorts and she suddenly registers his arms wrapped around her shoulders, the scratch of stubble against her cheek. Sam hums in acknowledgement and then Bucky kisses her, the sweetheart. Steve lets go and she hears the tell-tale rattling of hangers and drawers, but she abandons that thread when Bucky climbs into her lap. His weight is a balm, like a Great Dane that still thinks it’s a puppy, and she melts instantly. He bears down, all but blots out the sunlight with the breadth of his shoulders, and she closes her eyes and curls into the warm safe cavern of his clavicle. 

* * *

They decided to meet at one of Sam’s favorite ‘put-some-respect-on-my-name’ restaurants, _ Baba’s _, which features entirely outdoor seating surrounding a stage for live music and dancing. It is, presumably, a good introduction to the melting-pot culture of Wakanda, the staff are all polyglots, and the food is delicious, but it’s also loud and distracting enough to fill the spaces between the inevitable silences, perfect for meetings. 

“It used to be an amphitheater, but when they couldn’t hold festivals in the middle of downtown anymore the bank sold it,” Sam explains as they approach the entrance. They’re early, Gabriel and Josephine won’t arrive for another half hour at least, depending on traffic, but Sam wants to relax for a bit, preferably with a drink. 

“Wow, that’s so clever, with the tent-thingy.” Bucky’s eyes are wide, his arm steady under her hand. Steve is on her other side, arm slung casually around her shoulders, eyeing the architecture covetously. 

“Wait till you see the inside. Steve might cry,” she teases gently. He nods solemnly in agreement, Bucky laughs, and then they step into the low round glass building. Steve makes a high noise in his throat and Bucky whispers, “oh my god.”

It’s easy to see why. The building that houses the functional parts of the restaurant is curved around three quarters of the theater on the topmost wall. Through the floor to ceiling glass windows on the other side of the indoor space Sam can see the complete circle with its alternating wide and narrow steps leading down to the concert stage. The bar is to their left, open and already filled with people, tall standing tables nearby. The first step down is wide and dotted with long tables for large groups, and every other step leading down decreases in width to allow for smaller tables until there are only the original steps adjacent to the stage and loveseats with small side tables for drinks and snacks. 

“Hello, welcome to _ Baba’s, _ do you have a reservation?” The hostess greets them warmly, dressed in a short-sleeved tunic and leggings with gold embroidery at the seams. Her name tag says, _ Asa, _and she smiles like an old friend. 

“For Omari-Wilson,” Sam replies. 

Asa checks the registry book again, nods to herself, and then grabs menus and gestures for them to follow with a lilting, “this way.” 

They are seated at a round table almost exactly midway between the restaurant and the stage. Steve’s head is swiveling around, staring longingly at the crawling plants draped here and there, admiring the comfortable wicker loveseats meant for couples further down. Bucky is grinning at the expression on his face, a little poleaxed and envious, but Sam can see the spinning gears in his mind, his desire to give Steve anything he wants evident on his face. Asa wishes them a lovely evening before bouncing back up the stairs and disappearing inside. Their server arrives a scant few moments later, a tall young man with locs falling to his waist, a gleaming smile, and a warm voice. They order drinks and decline ordering food until the rest of their party arrives, and Sam loses herself in mindless happy chatter and communal people-watching. 

“Do I get to know where the wendigo is?” Bucky is leaning halfway into her space, arm on the back of her chair and face lit up with intent. 

“No, but it knows where you are,” Steve is smirking into his glass, pleased and excited for the insanity Bucky will conjure for him. 

“How fast can a wendigo move?” Bucky’s gaze slides sideways as he puzzles it out, no doubt flipping through his vast library of arbitrary knowledge. Sam is content to sit between them, sipping idly on her fruit wine and watching the servers light braziers. 

The last of the sun's rays have set when Asa reappears with Gabriel and Josephine. Steve, recognizing him, stands to shake his hand firmly and introduce himself, and Bucky follows suit.

Seeing Gabe again after so long makes her stomach flip and her chest ache, but the grief does not swoop through her. Sam doesn’t miss the way he loved her anymore, doesn’t miss loving him. A part of her might still love him, small and dimming as it is, but the rest of her has been so wrapped up in loving and being loved by the two men bracketing her that the ache and bitterness spill out of her almost all at once. 

In the space it takes for everyone to take their seats Sam’s heart unclenches and the smile she offers Josephine is genuine and _ free _. 

“Josephine Waters, I’m glad to meet you,” she offers a delicate hand to shake, pale and cool. 

“Samadhi Omari-Wilson, call me Sam, the pleasure is mine.” She leans back, takes in the scene before her. Steve is sitting up straight and stiff, but has a hand on her thigh, fingers curled possessively inward, thumb stroking like a metronome across the vines she inked there. Bucky is just the opposite, leaning back in the most imperious man-spread she’s ever seen, knee bumping into hers, with his arm across the back of her chair and the lithe fingers of his left hand resting lightly on the side of her neck. Gabriel is looking at Bucky curiously, unaware of Steve’s grip, questions flashing in his gaze, lightening fast. 

Before the silence can drag on uncomfortably and before any of them attempt small talk their server, Tunde, reappears asking after the drinks of the newcomers and promising a swift return to take their orders. 

“So, will you be ordering for the table or do we get to choose?” is the first thing Gabriel says to her.

People like to ask Sam questions, barbed and benign alike, often with their own assumptions coloring her answer no matter what it is. She swallows the bitterness that wants to pour from her mouth, tries to remember that she didn’t ask him to stay, didn’t fight for him to stay, and then she considers that maybe he wanted her to. 

She stares him in the soul, more whole and loved and powerful than she has ever been, and shrugs carelessly. 

“Depends, do you want to be self-righteous or do you want to be well-fed?” 

Josephine’s face flashes with surprise before she swallows it. Steve’s hand squeezes her thigh approvingly and Bucky snorts. Gabriel stares back, calculating, and then he grins, pleased with whatever he sees and leans back, throwing his own arm over the back of Josephine’s chair. Sam sips her wine and rubs the tension from the base of Steve’s spine with one hand. 

“Glad you’re still a firecracker, almost had me worried,” he says, finally, the space between them all growing more tense by the moment. 

“Some things are unchangeable,” she murmurs just as Tunde returns with their drinks. When he asks if they’re ready to order, they all look to her, Steve and Bucky with their affection carved onto their faces, Gabriel with anticipation that borders on schadenfreude, and Josephine with curiosity. Sam wonders what has been said about her in private, and what assumptions have been based entirely off of her public persona. 

Sam doesn’t look at the menu. 

“For the table: two orders of veggie samosas, a bottle of Hanuman’s Mango, the chapati taste plate, the yassa poulet, steamed rice, flatbread, and a family order of beyenatu, please. Thank you,” she smiles at the waiter, who grins like he knows a secret. He confirms the order and leaves with promises to return with their appetizers shortly. 

Josephine is staring, so Sam stares right back, gazes locked and holding for several moments while the men between them watch. 

“So, what have you been up to?” Gabriel asks, like he has any right. She can feel Steve tensing, likely on the same wavelength, so she looks to Bucky, whose face is as impassive as she’s ever seen it, but his eyes are zeroed in on Gabriel like a lazy predator. 

“Oh,” she flaps her hand and then reaches for her drink, “more of the same: wine and art and pretty boys in the backyard.”

“Do you mind if I ask a couple questions?” Josephine asks abruptly, her accent thick and lilting. 

“On or off the record?” Sam peers at her over the rim of her wine glass. 

“Off: I’m curious,” Josephine responds. Sam tilts her head, weighs the options, considers the woman across from her shrewdly. She nods and leans forward to rest her head in her palm, Steve’s hand inches further up her thigh, Bucky’s slides down to rest on her lower back. She watches Josephine’s eyes dart between the three of them quickly. 

“Do you resent me?” Josephine asks bluntly, voice flinty. 

“No.” Sam replies immediately. It never crossed her mind. Josephine’s eyebrows shoot into her bangs, professionally choppy and a little frizzy in the heat and lovely still. She gazes at the woman absently, takes in the gold highlighting her auburn hair, the sweet freckles dusted across the bridge of her nose, the roundness of her blue eyes, the sharpness of her jawline, the swan-like column of her neck, and understands why Gabriel chose her. Josephine wasn’t the reason Gabriel left any more than Sam was a reason for him to stay. 

“Are you three in a relationship?” is her next question, asked with a curious tilt of the head. From the corner of her eye, Sam can see Gabriel shift in his seat, and let’s a shit-eating grin stretch across her face. 

“Yes,” she drawls, satisfaction in the slow slide of her hiss and decadence in the abruptly liquid slouch of her spine. 

And, finally, with a head tilted pointedly in Gabriel’s direction and eyes laser focused on Sam’s face, “Do you still love him?”

The answer is quick and easy and Sam absently appreciates Josephine’s no-bullshit approach. 

“No.” 

Conversation spirals outward, saved frequently by Bucky charming the table until their food arrives. They eat in slightly uncomfortable silence, broken-up only by sparse commentary on the food, empty questions about the restaurant and city, and requests for more alcohol. The drummers take their places on stage halfway through the meal, after the sky has completely darkened and the restaurant is at capacity. There is a small introduction given by the owner and then the rhythms of her ancestors begin to fill the cavernous space. The pulsing of the dancers around the stage, the rattle and shake of the gourds tied to their calves beckoning to Sam’s limbs like home. 

Bucky is entranced, eyes alight in the ambient glow, unconscious grin splitting his face. She wonders if he knows the joy his smile inspires, if anyone has ever told him how warm his eyes become when he’s basking in something beautiful. She wonders if he sees the inevitability of crows feet when he’s shaving, if he is as in love with his tan as she is. Sam wonders similar things about Steve all the time: if he knows that one of his eyes blinks first when he smiles at her, if he understands how deeply she cherishes his hands when she traces the lines on his palms in bed. He’s looking at the performance too, but his eyes flick towards Bucky every now and again, and she thinks she glimpses, just for a moment, the exact depth and fervor of his love for the other man. 

And when his eyes flicker down to meet hers, she sees a mirrored well-spring in his gaze, and Sam’s entire body feels as though it begins to glow with effervescent warmth. She grins at him, a quick half quirk of her mouth, and he winks back at her before his attention is pulled back to the performance below. Sam looks across the table at Gabriel, finds him and Josephine already observing her closely, a mixture of curiosity and maybe resentment and perhaps fascination -or maybe that’s shock- contorting their faces. She grins at them gamely, tilts her head and her half-full wine glass in a silent toast, and downs its entirety without breaking eye contact. 

They skip desert, agree on the meeting place for the interview the next day, and part ways amicably. When they step through the threshold of their dark suite, Sam’s shoulders drop like stones and the worries of the day are abandoned in the hallway. She soaks in the tub while Steve and Bucky take turns showering, accepts their kisses and listens to the music channel they’ve put on as she watches them unwind and unfurl through the glass half wall that separates them. When she emerges from the bathroom Steve is sitting on the loveseat with his laptop while Bucky lounges on the king bed. She sits at the vanity and carefully twists her hair in preparation for tomorrow, the clock reflection telling her halfway through her task that tomorrow has already arrived.

They wait up for her, wait until she has washed her hands and tucked stray strands into her bonnet. Steve dresses her in one of his old t-shirts, the blue one with the stretched collar and the bleach stain on the bottom hem, and kisses her when her arms fall back to her sides. Bucky holds out a pair of his red boxers lowly, beseeches her with his loving gaze to steady herself on his broad shoulders as she steps into them, and rewards her with a kiss, too. 

Ensconced in their clothes and folded between their bodies, Sam falls asleep with a small smile and a slow-blooming excitement for the adventure of the next day. 

* * *

When it is all done, the interview, which is professional and stifling and seemingly never-ending, and the photoshoot, which is tense and also seemingly never-ending, when it’s _ all done, _ Sam lounges on the balcony of their suite with a well-deserved blunt and a tall glass of something electric pink called a _ Sayonara, Fucker. _

“Will they send proofs and shit before they publish?” Steve wonders from the floor. There’s a cushion under his head and his legs are vertical along the half wall to her right, the tops of his feet peeking over the balcony’s edge. 

“Probably, maybe,” Bucky replies from the loveseat to her left. His body is far too long for the furniture but he seems happy enough, face tilted towards the sunset. 

“When’s the issue supposed to be released?” Steve presses. 

“Don’t care. Here.” Sam holds out the blunt and takes a long sip from her drink, the alcohol and the cannabis mixing like ambrosia in her gut. She pulls out her phone, sends Gabriel a succinct ‘_ we’re even.’ _text and then deletes his number. She laughs as she throws it in the general direction of the bed, uncaring of whether it lands or not. Steve takes a couple long hits that remind Sam all at once why she fell in love with this silly white boy. Her libido, recently absent in the wake of her stress and anxiety, rears its head and she leers at the slip of skin between the bottom of his shirt and the waistband of his shorts. He passes the blunt to Bucky between delicate fingers and Sam pours herself onto the floor next to him. 

It’s an immediate and consuming desire, gluttonous and greedy, and it propels her to straddle his lap and take his mouth in a smoky kiss. Steve feels so _ good, _ solid and lovely and familiar like home between her legs and she will never dedicate enough books to encapsulate the veracity with which she adores him. His arms are sluggish as they tug her closer, the way he’s always a bit more languid and tender when he’s high, but his mouth is as hot and demanding as ever, no matter who's on top. Sam presses her weight down, feels the heat of him through her tank top, the _ breadth _of him through her shorts, and begins to rock, slowly, surely, just to feel him move with her. As their kisses begin to roam: the column of her neck, the hinge of his jaw, the dip of her clavicle, the bobbing apple of his throat, their noises begin to eek into the rapidly descending night, and it is Bucky who interrupts them. 

“C’mon you exhibitionists, there is a whole ass bed not ten feet- Steven!” Bucky is laughing now as he tugs at Steve’s arms and when she looks up and around she sees that one of Steve’s feet is caught precariously in the gap between the half-wall and the floor, one wrong move and it’d be twisted horribly. Sam grimaces and holds her arms out for Bucky to assist, which he does insofar as picking her up and cuddling her close. 

“Up, ya lil shit, so I can watch with fancy hotel lighting.” Bucky abandons Steve on the balcony and Sam giggles, grabbing her tall drink on their way. It’s a night for revels and inebriation and sating her exhibitionist desires with her private captive audience.

Bucky sets her down on the bed and takes her drink away, the spoilsport. She stretches out, able to finally luxuriate in the silkiness of the sheets and the softness of the mattress. Steve’s body slithers on top of hers with a whisper and her legs part, affection-hazy mind tuned back into his heat. 

“Steve!” Sam exclaims, thrilled by his laugh and the subsequent sloppy kiss. 

“Wanna give Bucky a show, lovely? He makes fun of us for being exhibitionists but he’s a voyeur so what does he know?” Steve’s fingers are playing with the hem of her top, warm calloused fingers teasing maddeningly at the sensitive band of her lower back. 

“He knows nothing, Jon Snow,” she husks out and then loses it. Steve snorts and generously helps her out of her clothes, is still laughing as she tugs his shorts down and off. Sam looks over at Bucky, reclined like a brooding rockstar in the armchair to their left, legs thrown wide, head propped against one hand on the armrest while his other hand strokes low on his belly. He’s shirtless and shoe-less and he shouldn’t be able to make flower printed shorts look so good but _ he does _and Sam wants to weep for wanting him. He’s grinning but his eyes are low and heavy with cannabis and lust and leisure. 

“Still deserves a show, though,” Sam winks and then turns back to Steve, happy to be folded under his bulk and ravished while Bucky watches and murmurs encouragement. 

Sam thinks, _ oh, maybe I can deserve this, _ when Steve parts her thighs and lowers his head with a smile. She thinks, _ what did I ever do to deserve this? _ when Steve presses deep and holds, knowing how much she likes to feel full and _ wanted, needed. _ She thinks, _ doesn’t matter, they’re mine, _when Bucky slips into the decadent mess Steve just vacated and fucks her tenderly enough to bring tears to her eyes. 

All told, Sam’s favorite part of sex is the afterglow, the loose flop of tired limbs across plush sheets, the slurred murmur of swollen mouths, the uninhibited gentleness that can only be found in the solar-flare afterimages of intimacy. She drags her body from the bed and into the bathroom, grins when her hips ache and she can feel the light bruises that were squeezed and pressed into her thighs. She steps into the shower only long enough to rinse the sweat from her body, and as she is brushing her teeth Steve and Bucky take their turns as well. She hesitates for only a moment before crawling into the middle of the bed, gently shushing the anxious child in her mind; to ask, however wordless, for touch, is not selfish, and the men in her life are all too happy to smother her under their combined bulk. Sam is proven right, and the child is soothed when, moments later, a warm body drapes across her ribs like a human sushi, and then another weight settles on top of that one and suddenly she is the lowest rung of a human Jenga tower. 

Sam squawks appropriately about the necessity of inflated lungs, but it’s a half-hearted protest and she’s already mostly asleep when the boys decide to stop tormenting her. On the edge of sleep she feels a leg slot between hers, warm ribs against her back and the tickle-scratch of pubic hair on her backside; an arm slung over her neck so her face is tucked into a clavicle, and her arms respond on autopilot to drag the body in front of her closer, closer, until they’re all but pressed tip-to-toe, and she thinks, _ yes, it’s still worth it. _

* * *

Months later, Iman shuts the stairway door behind him with a quiet _ click _and beckons her to sit with him on the couch. He’s got his laptop and a pensive look on his face. 

People like to ask Sam questions, sometimes subtly, often not, careless of her answer and eager to say what they want to say. 

Iman says, “I just received an email from the editorial staff at _ L’Oubliette. _ Proofs from your interview and photoshoot. We can go over that in a moment.” Iman’s voice has always been quiet, he’s always been soft-spoken and sweet, but there is an undercurrent of steel that tells Sam to _ shut up and listen. _

“Bucky’s contract ends in six months. So you all need to figure out whether your next trip to T’Chakalo will be to renew his visa or put him on a plane.” Iman’s face remains carefully blank and non-judgmental, but Sam hears the questions he wants her to start asking. 

_ Who’s staying? Who’s going? This isn’t a repeat of history, but will it rhyme? _

“Okay, Iman.” Sam's shoulders slump a little, pre-emptive ache weighing them down. “Let’s go over those proofs.” 

And they do. Josephine transcribed their interview almost verbatim and added just enough fluff to interest a casual reader. Gabriel’s photos are as lovely as they ever were, but there is a palpable distance in this set, the focus lying more with capturing Sam as a part of her environment instead of pulling her from it. 

Sam thinks of the way Steve sketches her, always on toned paper with charcoals or colored pencils if he can help it, always wreathed in her surroundings. Always ‘Sam on the couch’, ‘Sam in the pool’, ‘Sam taking a nap on the floor’: there’s always context in his sketches. Now, looking at Gabriel’s photos, she understands what that context _ meant. _

Here lies Sam, right where she belongs, in touching distance, in loving distance. 

* * *

“So,” She starts four months later after dinner, when they’re sprawled across various furniture upstairs like lazy cats. 

“Bucky,” she tries hesitantly, “your contract ends in about two months.” she lets the statement hang for a long moment. She’s laying on her back, steadfastly looking at the ceiling instead of her companions. 

“I know.” He says. Sam wants to let herself hope. She chews on the question for a minute more. 

“What do you want to do?” she asks, still not looking at him but putting all the cards in his lap, refusing to weigh him down with her own selfish expectations. 

“Stay.”

Sam’s neck cracks with the speed and force of her turning head. Bucky is leaning back with both his feet perched on the edge of the coffee table, his head low on the back cushion and his butt all but hanging off the edge of the couch. Steve is on the other side of the U-shaped couch, repose on the chaise in a luxurious sprawl, eyes closed and a content expression on his face, as if there was never any doubt that Bucky would stay. 

“How long?” she asks next. 

“As long as possible.” he replies with a careless shrug, sapphire eyes drawn to the transient colors of the early evening sky. 

“Okay,” Sam says casually, like her center of gravity hasn’t been shifted by magnitudes in the space of a couple minutes. Like her mind isn’t spinning with possibility and fantasy and the good kind of what-ifs. Like tears aren’t trying their damndest to appear.

Before her mind has the opportunity to really spin up and away into the ethers, Bucky is there, kissing her breathless. When they break it, he looks at her like all of his dreams have just come true, and when Sam looks for Steve he is there, too. Kneeling, with one hand behind his back. 

“So I was thinking.” He grins like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, the same way he did when they ditched class and drove to the beach. 

Sam smiles and waits.

* * *

_ A Conversation With a Mystic _

_ Daughter of a Swiss businessman and a Congolese professor, Samadhi “Sam” Omari-Wilson grew up in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, splitting summers between Europe and the Wakandan Congo. She attended art school in San Francisco for approximately three years before dropping out and, seemingly, dropping from the face of the planet. _

_ Fast-forward two years and she released her first book “into the nightlight” which was met with quiet underground success and a growing cult following. A year later she began uploading sporadic videos to YouTube, ranging in content from vlogs to reviews to clever how-to’s. By the time 2020 rolled around she had, in no particular order: released two more books, “all it takes to fall” a collection of short stories and “in tongues” a collection of prose, poetry, and photography; garnered more than three million fans and subscribers across various social media platforms; started a successful wine business; opened a private tattoo studio; and has promised another book by the end of 2021. _

_ But, apparently, that’s not Sam. _

** _Josephine_ ** _ : “So, boring questions first?” _

_ Sam laughs. It is a musical sound that fills up the room. This is a woman who laughs with her whole self, unselfconscious. _

** _Samadhi_ ** _ : “Absolutely.” _

** _J_ ** _ : “How did you arrive here? 26 years old, multiple business ventures, a growing online following, and you live in the middle of the jungle. What set you on this path?” _

** _S_ ** _ : “Well, it’s kinda hard to explain. But, like, okay so, I was in college right? Had an apartment above a liquor store, worked in said liquor store, spent my nights drinking bottom shelf wine and stressing about brushstroke techniques in 17th century Hindustani art. I loved it, was fascinated by it, am still fascinated by it, but I was so fucking lonely. I couldn’t shake it, no matter how many times I hung out with friends or called my parents or went on dates, I was absolutely lonely to my core. So I dropped out of school and moved back home for a while, and that didn’t work. So I visited my grandparents in Switzerland and that didn’t work. So I came back here and visited my grandparents and that didn’t work either. And then, as I’m sitting in the transit lounge of a connection on my way back home, I see this couple, right, and they’re obviously head over heels in love with each other. And then I overhear someone nearby wondering if the guy is single and in my head I’m stunned because can’t they see it? Can’t they tell? And I just pull out my sketchbook and start doodling that couple but words are spilling on the page, too, how it’s so obvious, the way he looks at her, the way she reaches out to touch him, the casual intimacy they share in a building full of strangers. It set my brain on fire and the whole flight home I’m just looking around at all these people and I can’t stop thinking about how all of our lives have led us here, sharing a flight with a couple hundred other strangers, and none of these people know my name but maybe one of them will remember my face for a while. And for a moment I forgot the loneliness. Almost as soon as my plane landed I was booking another flight back.” _

_ Sam laughs again, quieter and a little self-deprecating. _

** _J_ ** _ : “You’ve developed a reputation for being a bit of a wildcard in various creative circles, is that something you cultivated intentionally?” _

** _S_ ** _ : “People are uncomfortable with things they can’t pin down, you know: is or isn’t, yes or no, zero or one. But infinity stretches between zero and one, as well, and that’s where I like to linger.” She pauses, contemplative, and the way she gazes out the window to her right feels familiar. There’s something about her that feels unfathomably fragile. “The literary critics scoff because I give them art, the art critics scoff because I give them words, the influencers scoff because I give too little, so I must be lying, the public scoff because I give too much, so I must be lying. I try to cultivate honesty and kindness within myself and the world around me, what anyone makes of that is up to them. If I’m a wildcard, it’s because the world has been conditioned to expect banality.” _

** _J_ ** _ : “What does it mean to you, then? To have a growing audience of people interested in the work you do?” _

** _S_ ** _ : “It’s shocking, and lovely. The heart of all my creativity, whether it’s the writing or the art or the music, is connectivity. Even the critics I’m grateful for, because they’ve still connected with me, even if it’s only to decry my use of subject-verb disagreements. That I reach out and they reach out and we find each other in the middle, whether to clash or grasp, tells me that it is worth it. You’re interviewing me for a French lifestyle magazine I’ve heard of in passing, my best friend is going to call me later to complain about the _ ** _absolute agony_ ** _ of sorting through my business email, and my editor is going to gently bully me into sending her my latest pages. I’m going to sleep in the house my parents built, on land that I own, surrounded on all sides by the family I chose. It’s worth it.” _

** _J_ ** _ : “What advice would you give to upstart creatives?” _

**_S_**_: “Fall in love. Don’t jump in trying to make money or garner fame: these things will leave you cold and incomplete. If you do it, do it because you’re in love, do it because it is an act of worship, do it because you can’t fathom _**_not_** _doing it. If you fall in love the rest will fall in place.”_

** _J_ ** _ : “What about burnout? How do you work through it, or avoid it?” _

** _S_ ** _ : “You gotta let yourself have varied interests, y’know? Be in love with the process itself, not just the product. I have the same process for painting that I do for tattooing, the same methodology, but they’re different mediums which require different skill sets and I find it endlessly fascinating to experiment with both. And I let myself do nothing. Sometimes I just sit there on my big red couch and I stare out the window for hours and let my mind wander. I take breaks, I talk to people, I go exploring the jungle, sometimes I just take a weeklong vacation to the city. The best way to avoid burning out is to occasionally snuff out the flame.” _

Josephine leans back from the monitor, glances at her stack of transcripts and notes, and looks around the bustling office. Gabriel is talking with Jacques across the room, gesturing and nodding at a concept board. 

The part of her that wanted to feel ugly things for the beautiful woman she met a few months ago is small and hard to reach. By the end of their visit Josephine understood why Gabriel felt compelled to tell her stories, why some of his best photographs are of her. This might be the best writing Josephine has ever done. Something about Sam, the earnestness she approaches all things with, the guileless friendliness, the willingness to give everyone a chance to be honest about how they feel, it’s compelling. Her phone dings with a Twitter notification, and when she unlocks the screen there is a DM waiting for her from Samadhi Wilson herself. 

_ Josephine. The proofs look amazing, thank you for letting me get a first glance at the article. I’m sure it’ll be wonderful, and I’m sure you’re entrenched in editing and refining it now. You and Gabriel make a great team. As I’m sure you know, Steve and Gabriel grew quite close during his time here, but Steve is too shy and stubborn to ask himself, so I’ve taken the liberty. You’ll likely receive a letter in the mail in the next few days, but I wanted to head it off just in case it got lost in the madness that is international postage. _

_ We’re having a small series of ceremonies in a few months, to honor each of our heritages and tie ourselves to each other. We’d love it if you and Gabriel could attend. _

_ Steve has few living family members, but I know he will always count Gabriel as one of them, and I know it would mean the world if he had that support. _

_ Let me know. Sam. _

Josephine grins to herself, and taps the screen to reply. 

**End**   
  



End file.
